


it don't mean a thing

by kitseybarbours



Series: it don't mean a thing [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Swing Kids (1993)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nazi Germany, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst, Disabled Character, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Nazi-Punching, Nazis, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Anti-Semitism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Suicide, Swing Dancing, Violence, really quite a lot of Nazi-punching actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-09-26 08:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 61,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9874790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours
Summary: “I’m to join the HJ,” Hux announces, toneless. “At once. My father’s grown tired, it would seem, of my ‘lollygagging about with cripples, girls, and sons of traitors, dancing to American filth,’” he adds, repeating verbatim and with venom the awful things his father had said. Ben winces.“Now I’ll be a better son to him and to the Reich. Doing my duty for the Fatherland and the future, helping Germany regain her rightful place in history, and all that,” Hux concludes, his full lips twisted in an ugly sneer. “Disgusting, all of it.”“I’ll join with you,” Ben says.He’d made up his mind as soon as Hux said it. He has no desire to become one of the goose-stepping, motto-spouting, khaki-clad HJ boys who push swing kids and younger boys into lockers at school — but he isn’t about to let Hux go alone. “If you have to join, then I’m coming with you,” he declares, coming to sit next to Hux on the bed and putting one hand on his shoulder.“No.” Hux refutes him at once. “Ben, you can’t. This is my cross to bear,” he says, wry even through his anger. “It’ll be awful. Don’t join until you have no choice.”“I don’t,” Ben says simply. “If you go, I go too.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys!! I've been working on this fic for ten months now, and I am so, so thrilled to finally be sharing it with you; I study World War Two and am learning German, and Swing Kids is one of my all-time favourite movies, so this seemed rather the thing to do. Before we start, though, here's a few disclaimers:
> 
>   * I don't believe that, in canon, Hux is a Nazi, nor is the First Order a Nazi organisation. I do not condone Nazism, or any of its ideas or policies, in any way, and this fic should not be taken as me doing so.
>   * All the Nazi propaganda and the vast majority of anti-Semitic, racist, and offensive language and actions in this fic, (with the exception of the posters in this chapter and a milder scene in chapter 5), come directly from the source material, i.e., Swing Kids, and also don't represent my own beliefs, nor necessarily my headcanons for the Star Wars characters.
>   * A lot of the dialogue and most of the plot also come directly from Swing Kids, which I don't own and can take no credit for. (I can, however, tell you that it's a spectacularly cheesy and wonderful film and you should definitely watch it, although you don't need to have seen it to understand the fic.)
>   * While under German law at the time, Ben and Hux are underage (the age of consent was 21), under the Archive guidelines they aren't, so I've not tagged the fic as if they were.
> 

> 
> I think that about covers it. New chapters will be up every Friday, as per the usual; hope you enjoy. xx

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Illustrated](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/158854239016/a-commission-i-did-for-huxes-from-their-fic-it) by the wonderfully talented [pembroke](http://pembroke.tumblr.com/)!!

*

Standing on the doorstep of his best friend’s Hamburg manor, Benjamin Solberg shivers in the February night. He knocks on the door a third time, louder now, and calls, “Hux!”

_C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,_ he thinks. _We’re gonna be late._ He’s raising his hand to knock again when, finally, the door is swung open by the Huxes’ stern housekeeper, who frowns in disapproval when she sees his face — “Oh, it’s you,” she says.

Ben smiles widely at her: _"Guten Abend_ , Elena!” She looks unimpressed.

“Young Master Solberg is here,” Elena calls over her shoulder, but there’s no need: a door opens and shuts on the second floor, and then the slim red-haired figure of Brandeis Hux II comes tripping lightly down the staircase, saying, “I know, Elena, thank you; I could hear him pounding on the door from upstairs.” He shoots Ben a look: “You’ve no manners, honestly, Ben.”

“You’re the one who’s late,” Ben informs his best friend cheerfully. Hux smirks and makes no excuse.

Elena fetches his grey wool coat and passes it to him; Hux puts it on, thanking her. Ben hums a swing tune under his breath, right foot tapping along to the beat, as Hux slips a scarf around his neck and adjusts his lapels. “Hurry _up,_ Hux, come on!” Ben pleads with him. “I bet Karo and Dietrich are already there. The dancing started fifteen minutes ago!”

Hux shrugs, unperturbed. He takes his time in giving his hair one final smoothing-over — Ben groans in irritation — and then finally shoots him another devilish grin, puts on his hat (the brim tipped back _just so),_ and says, “What are we waiting for?”

The Bismarck is busy tonight. The noise of wailing trumpets and a pounding swing beat is audible from half a block away, getting steadily louder as they approach the club. The doorman waves them in with a smile, and Ben and Hux wend their way through the lindy-hopping crowd. “Do you see them?” Hux shouts over the music.

Ben points — “Over there!”

Their friend Karoline Pfeiffer stands waving at a round table in the corner. She’s tall, taller than both of them (which is saying something), and is easily visible even in the writhing, lively mass of people. “Karo!” Ben shouts, waving back. He grabs Hux’s wrist and steers them through the crowd.

_“Swing Heil,_ boys!” Karo beams when they finally make it to the table. Her white-blonde bob is unruly, her mouth a bold shear of red lipstick. “Didn’t think you’d make it.” She holds out her hand for each of them to squeeze; Ben drops a kiss on the back of it.

“We’re late because someone’s _hair_ wasn’t quite perfect,” Ben tells her as they shed their coats, rolling his eyes at Hux. “But we’re here now and that’s what counts. Evening, Dietrich!”

At Karo’s side is their timid, round-faced friend Dietrich Meissner, who smiles nervously at Ben’s greeting, brushing a lock of dark hair out of his eyes. His guitar case is propped up against the leg of his chair, waiting like a faithful pet: he’s not booked to play tonight, but he likes to keep it with him, just in case. “Evening, Ben. Hello, Hux. _Swing Heil!”_

“Shall we dance?” Karo asks.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Hux says, craning his neck to scope out the dance floor.

Ben beams. “Let’s go.”

Hux and Karo dance a few songs, and Ben catches the eye of a girl he knows from school and they partner up. (Dietrich stays at the table: “No, no,” he assured them with the usual sympathetic wince when they left to join the dancing and asked, as they always do — even though they know he can’t — if he was sure he didn’t want to come; “I’ll be all right holding down the fort!”) The music is loud and swinging and boisterous, and the crowd is just the same — all of Hamburg’s swing kids, decked-out in their American clothes and dancing the lindy hop. It’s illegal, technically, under the new Nazi laws, and that makes it all the more fun.

The café is hot with electric lights and the vibrant energy of dozens, maybe hundreds of people. (The jazz is hot, too, but that goes without saying.) Skirts swing, feet fly, boys dip their partners and flip them over their shoulders; the girls shriek and laugh and close their eyes to the music. The three of them, Hux and Ben and Karoline, dance until the very last song, as they always do. Two or three hours after they started — it is a school night, after all — the band plays their final chord, and the crowd whoops and hollers, cheering for them; Ben, laughing, his long hair flying wild about his face, pulls Hux in for a hug and claps him exuberantly on the back. “What a night!” he grins.

They fetch their coats and hats and Dietrich, and file out with the rest of the crowd, being careful to hush once they enter the street. Karo’s found one of her girlfriends to walk home with, so she waves to the boys and they go their separate ways. Ben whistles as they walk along the chilly, deserted streets, hands jammed in his pockets for warmth. “Bet you can’t beat me down to the bridge,” he says casually, looking straight ahead but directing his words to Hux.

Hux raises his eyebrows. “I beat you last week, didn’t I? What makes you think I can’t do it again?”

“Hm.” Ben carries on walking, still whistling, still looking straight ahead — Hux tenses, ready — and all at once Ben shouts “Go!” He takes off, his long, lanky legs pelting down the pavement.

_“Oh,”_ says Dietrich, sounding upset. His scoliosis requires him to wear a back brace and makes running very difficult; Ben knows this.

“Sorry, Dietrich,” Hux tells him — but all the same: “Bastard,” he curses, and takes off after Ben, catching up to him in no time. Ben’s chest burns pleasantly with the cool night air as they pound faster, faster, neck and neck, down to the embankment under the bridge. Dietrich looks with resignation at his friends’ rapidly disappearing backs and sighs, adjusting his bowler hat and following them at a slow, careful walk, his guitar case swinging in his hand.

Up ahead, Ben pulls in front of Hux, bumping his shoulder, and teases, “Last one there’s an HJ pansy!”

Hux huffs a laugh. “Hope you like shining your boots, then, Solberg,” he pants, and with a final burst of speed pulls in front of Ben and reaches the wall of the little maintenance shed under the bridge. Ben follows seconds later, bracing himself on the wall and breathing hard.

“All ready to join up, then, _junger Mann?”_ Hux gibes, giving Ben a good-natured shove. “Ready to do your part for _das Vaterland?”_

“Shut up, Hux,” Ben retorts, shaking his head. “You know they’ll never get me.”

A familiar five-note whistle is heard, breaking the evening silence: _It don’t mean a thing…_ And then — “Brandeis? Benjamin?” It’s Dietrich’s voice, meek and quiet. He comes down the street to the embankment, walking painfully.

 Hux winces. “Down here, Dietrich,” he calls. He turns to Ben: “We shouldn’t’ve taken off like that. He’s having a bad night; look, you can tell.”

Sure enough, Dietrich’s movements look even stiffer and more arduous than usual. He’s been afflicted since he was a child, and some days are better than others; today, however, is not one of those days. Ben’s brow creases, and, abashed, he hurries over to help Dietrich along. “Sorry for taking off, pal. Won’t happen again! You all right, there?” he asks, as Dietrich leans more heavily on him.

“I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” Dietrich says with an embarrassed smile, mopping his brow. They reach the wall of the maintenance shed and he leans gratefully against it. Ben turns back to Hux with a look of guilt in his eyes, shrugging a little: _What can you do?_

Hux shrugs in return. _It’s fine now._

“I need to unload,” Ben announces suddenly. He’s caught sight of a row of Nazi posters on the wall of the shed: his eyes take on a mischievous glint, and he starts singing a swing tune, mocking and jaunty. He undoes his fly and lines up, taking aim at the posters. “ _It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it…”_

Dietrich laughs. Hux smirks and takes his place at Ben’s side, unbuttoning too, joining in the singing and the pissing. Dietrich hobbles over, too, and the three of them sing louder and louder until they’ve all finished and the posters — showing rows of proud young Nazis underneath the brave red words _Freiheit und Brot! —_ are sopping and blurred. “Fine work, gentlemen,” Hux says, doing up his trousers and nodding with satisfaction at their handiwork. “Absolutely inspired.”

Ben snickers. And then he frowns, hearing something — a police whistle blows, and then angry shouting is heard: “Stop! Stop where you are!” Running feet come pounding down the sidewalk, and all three boys turn to look.

Rapidly approaching them is a man in a trench-coat, running with one hand clamped tight on his hat, turning every few steps to cast a frantic look over his shoulder. And now round the corner, a few yards behind him, comes pelting a pack of Gestapo officers, shouting at him to stop running.

“What the hell?” Ben breathes. And then, suddenly, the man in the coat is upon them, racing down the sidewalk right toward where they stand. Dietrich and Hux step back quickly, but Ben, distracted, isn’t fast enough: they collide, and both he and the man are knocked down.

Ben’s head hits the ground hard: by reflex, he closes his eyes. He feels the impact of his cheekbone on the pavement and can tell he’ll have a bruise. Now he opens his eyes again, and time seems to stop as the strange man meets his gaze for a split second. Ben sees a terrified determination there, and he knows, instinctively, that this man is running for his life. A shiver runs down Ben’s spine.

“Ben!” Hux says. “Are you all right?”

The spell is broken. The police whistles are getting closer; the noise of pounding boots is loud. The man on the ground breaks eye contact with Ben and gets up at once. He takes off as quickly as if he’d never fallen. All at once he spots the steps of the bridge looming in the dark, and with desperation he flings himself up them.

“Yes,” Ben says, getting to his feet but still watching the man, “I’m fine —”

“Gestapo, watch out,” Hux interrupts, grabbing Ben’s arm and pulling him out of the way. Sure enough, the five Gestapo officers, wearing oily black mackintoshes and carrying torches, have caught up with their prey. They tear past the boys without even seeing them, chasing the man up the steps of the bridge. Ben feels sick. _There’s no way he can outrun all five of them._

Ben runs out from beneath the bridge in order to watch as the rest of the scene unfolds. His friends follow him, unable to tear themselves away: Ben can hear Dietrich breathing, open-mouthed, transfixed in horrified fascination.

The man has reached the middle of the bridge. But the officers are close on his tail, their jackboots clanging on the metal platform.  The man looks back, sees the officers advancing towards him; he looks out, over the railing, down to the dark lapping water below. He makes his choice at once — Ben can see his jaw tightening from here. He steps up to the railing.

Ben’s gut clenches. At his sides, he hears Hux’s soft curse and Dietrich’s inhalation.

The officers are closer, shouting, waving their torches: “Stop! Stop!” The man ignores them. He straddles the railing. He wavers, unsteady, and then rights himself with determination. He swings his other leg over. He closes his eyes, and he jumps.

His scream is cut off in a hideous splash.

The noise of the impact is loud and violent in the chilly night air. Ben’s face pales.

The Gestapo officers pound across the bridge. The ripples spread out, below, from where the man jumped in. All at once, automatically, the officers pull out their rifles and fire rounds into the water: methodical, efficient, over and over and over.

Ben’s stomach heaves. _There’s no way he could survive that._

Their work finished, the officers leave the bridge as quickly as they’d come: filing briskly down the steps, _clang clang clang_ in their shiny brutal boots. Hux, Ben, and Dietrich stare after them until they disappear — and then, only then, do they relax and look at one another again: three pairs of eyes wide and shocked in the moonlight, three sets of fists clenched tight at rigid sides.

Hux speaks first.  “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

His friends nod wordlessly, looking sick.

They make their way through the city in silence, none of them willing or able to make small talk after what they’ve just seen. Ben’s full mouth is set in a troubled moue, his dark eyebrows creased; Dietrich appears to be trembling. Hux walks staring straight ahead, limbs stiff and face expressionless. The bone-breaking _smack_ of the man’s body against the cold, unforgiving black water plays over and over in all three of their heads.

They reach the diverging streets that lead one into Dietrich’s neighbourhood, the other up in the direction of Ben’s and Hux’s. The two of them bid Dietrich a subdued goodbye, and watch until he’s safely inside his house, the front door letting a shaft of warm light spill out onto the cobbled street before it’s closed again.

“Who do you think that man was?” Ben asks Hux when they’re about halfway to Ben’s apartment building, breaking the long, tense silence.

Hux exhales a long breath. When Ben meets his eyes he suspects his friend’s mind has been going, wildly and anxiously, to many of the same places as his own. “I’m sure he was just a criminal. A petty thief or something. A vandal, maybe,” Hux jokes half-heartedly, and Ben doesn’t smile. “I don’t know, Ben. He was probably…well, probably just a Jew.”

Ben nods. “Probably,” he says quietly. They walk in silence for a few moments more, but Ben’s mind has not been put at rest. He speaks up again: “But what if he was — you know — on a  _Rosa Liste?”_ His voice is soft, hardly audible — taking precautions even here, in the sleepy empty nighttime streets.

Hux sighs. Clearly he’s been thinking this, too, but didn’t want to bring it up. “I don’t think that’s likely, Ben,” he says, just as quietly. “Those lists — well, they have a hard time finding the men on those lists. It’s not exactly…easy to prove, is it?” he reminds him.

By all rights, the two of _them_ should be on one of the infamous Pink Lists. They’re lucky, though, that their age deflects suspicion. The Gestapo are only looking for adult men: the writers, artists, and intellectuals who are, supposedly, more likely to have adopted a “degenerate” lifestyle — not a couple of teenaged boys. But all the same, Ben’s fears are not completely unreasonable. It’s 1939; since the passing of the Nuremberg Laws and the revisions to Paragraph 175 of the criminal code four years ago, the Nazi prosecution of “anti-Reich” individuals and groups seems to grow more expansive and harsher every day. The man who jumped _could_ have been a Jew, or a Communist, or even just a pickpocket —  _but_ he could also have been on a Pink List.

“I suppose not,” Ben says, and he sounds very young. “Yes. I’m sure he was just…just a thief.”

“Mm.” Hux nods, and then he briefly squeezes Ben’s hand. “So don’t be frightened.”

They walk in silence the rest of the way to Ben’s. Once they’re hidden in the shadow of his building, despite their conversation it’s Ben who leans down and kisses Hux, warm and sweet and fleeting. Hux closes his eyes and kisses him back, but they pull apart almost simultaneously, even more aware than usual of the risks that they are taking.

Ben smiles at him and says, “Goodnight, Hux,” his thumb caressing Hux’s cheek.

“Goodnight, Ben.” Hux raises a hand in farewell and slips away into the night, down the street toward the much wealthier neighbourhood where his family lives.

Ben goes inside, climbs the flights of stairs to his family’s fourth-floor apartment, and lets himself in with his key. “Mama?” he calls softly, not wanting to wake his younger cousin, who is surely asleep in their shared room by now — but he has barely called for her when his mother appears, visibly flustered.

“Benjamin!”

Lea Solberg’s dark braids, crisscrossed overtop of her head, are escaping from their pins, frizzy hairs giving her a halo in the light from the kitchen. She hurries over to Ben and hugs him tightly for a moment — her son is more than two heads taller than her, his strong arms enveloping her petite frame completely — and then she pulls back and demands sternly, “Where have you been?”

Ben frowns down at her, puzzled. “I went out dancing with Hux and Karo and Dietrich. I told you so.”

“But it’s so _late,_ Ben — you’re never home this late, and on a school night!” Lea reprimands him, but the sheer relief in her dark-brown eyes overrides her serious tone. She clasps one of his big hands between both of her own calloused, work-worn ones. “What happened?”

“Nothing, Mama. We’re all alright,” Ben reassures her. “It’s just, there was a disturbance on the way home — a man was being chased by the Gestapo, and he jumped into the river,” he tells her. “We got distracted. That’s all.”

His mother’s brow creases. “Did you know the man?”

“No. Of course not,” Ben says, frowning too. “Why?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Lea sighs. Her frown deepens, and she reaches up to take Ben’s scraped and bruising face in her hand. “What happened to your face?”

“Nothing,” Ben lies, wincing. “I was trying out a new dance step, and I fell.”

“Who were you fighting with?” Lea asks suspiciously.

“I wasn’t fighting, Mama! I was dancing,” Ben insists. He attempts a winning smile. “It’s a wild dance, I’ve told you.”

Lea still doesn’t seem to believe him, but she lets the matter drop.  She sighs. “Please, Ben — just try to come home on time, the next time you go out. Maybe Hux’s parents are so well-placed that they don’t care what kind of trouble he gets into…” She trails off.

Ben feels a wave of guilt wash over him. Even though his father and uncle have been dead six years and the Gestapo have stopped watching their house, there is always the risk that they will start up again, if any of the Solbergs step a toe out of line.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I’ll be more careful next time.” Ben leans down and kisses his mother on the cheek; Lea smiles tiredly at her only son. “Where’s Rey? Is she asleep?” Ben asks.

“Yes, for a while now. She wanted to stay up until you got home but I made her go to bed,” Lea answers. She shakes her head at him. “You worried her, Ben. Go to bed now, and apologise to Rey in the morning.”

“Yes, Mama.”

In the little bedroom they share (the walls bedecked with swing posters, Django Reinhardt and Count Basie and Duke Ellington grinning down from them), Ben is not surprised to find his nine-year-old cousin, Renate Himmel — known to everyone, affectionately, as Rey — sitting up in bed, wide awake, with her light on. “Where were you?” she demands as soon as he’s closed the door behind him, her big hazel eyes sparking with indignation. “You’re home so late.”

“I was out dancing _,_ like always. Don’t worry about me,” Ben tells her lightly. He changes into his pyjamas behind the wardrobe door, hanging up his blazer and neatly folding his trousers for the next day’s wear. His cravat is tucked away and his hat hung up on a peg.

“Will you take me with you next time?” Rey asks, as always, watching him intently with her arms folded across her chest.

“Maybe one day,” Ben answers her, deflecting, as always. Rey sighs. Ben drops a kiss on the top of her head, turns out the light, and then climbs into his own creaky, spring-filled single bed, on the opposite wall from his cousin’s. “Goodnight, Rey. Sleep well.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so we're all on the same page: in German, Benjamin is (roughly) pronounced "BEN-ya-min" , Karoline is "ka-ro-LEEN-ah", Renate is "reh-NAH-tah", and Dietrich is "DEE-trick". Everything else, if I'm remembering correctly, is pronounced as written.
> 
> The title, of course, comes from the classic swing tune It Don't Mean a Thing. I'm partial to [Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington's version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMglEO7ctik), but the version used later on in the film and the fic is by [Billy Banks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLPOcalqj2E). The song they're singing at the bridge is [Tain't What You Do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SkoD2CIakQ) by Jimmie Lunceford.
> 
> FInally — I have a [main blog](http;//abernathae.tumblr.com) and a [Star Wars blog](http://huxes.tumblr.com)! I'll be posting [a link](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/157951560921/it-dont-mean-a-thing-chapter-1-kitseybarbours) to each week's chapter on the Star Wars one, and it'd be supermurgatroid of you to reblog them and get the word out, if you feel so inclined. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence (of the Nazi-punching variety and otherwise) and anti-Semitic language.

*

The next morning, Hux, Ben, Karo and Dietrich all meet up to walk to school, as usual. The boys are filling Karoline in on last night’s adventure, debating whether or not the man who jumped could possibly have survived.

“Even if the fall didn’t kill him, the bullets would’ve,” Hux contends.

“The Nazis don’t get everyone, Hux,” Ben argues, not knowing why: he _doesn’t_ think the man could’ve lived, but for some reason he feels the need to suggest that he might have. “He could’ve swum away before they started shooting…”

“I’m telling you, he never had a chance,” Hux insists darkly.

Ben sighs and lets the matter drop. They walk along in silence, coat collars turned up against the wind; they round a corner, approaching the very bridge where last night’s incident took place — and then Dietrich gasps, pointing down to the waterside. “Look!”

The four of them hurry closer to the embankment and look down to see what Dietrich’s spotted. It’s not hard to tell what’s caught his eye. A police boat and a smaller rowboat bob near the shore, two or three men in black diving-suits aboard each. As the four friends watch, one of the divers cranks a pulley and pulls something out of the water with what looks like a large fishhook. Two other men haul the thing aboard the boat with some difficulty. And as soon as the dredged-up object is brought above the water, it is revealed to be the limp, dripping body of a man in a trench-coat — unmistakable even from here as the man from last night.

“What’d I tell you?” Hux asks, expressionless.

Ben shudders. He glances at Hux. “At least he tried to get away. He didn’t just — wait for them.”

The four of them stare down at the scene in awful fascination. The man is dead, of course; definitely and horribly dead. His body, riddled with bullet-holes, is already beginning to bloat, the flesh paling: Ben hears Dietrich whisper “Christ,” sees him turn his face away.

A black car pulls up to the shore. A tall, thin man in a neat short-brimmed hat gets out, his back turned to Ben and his friends. They see him and one of the divers exchange _Heil Hitler_ s, and then he goes closer to the boat, gesturing to the body and apparently asking questions. The divers nod vigorously, and Ben can see their lips moving: _Ja. Ja._

“Gestapo,” says Hux. “Let’s go.” But none of them move.

Down below, the man from the Gestapo nods, seeming satisfied with what the divers have told him, and scribbles something in a notebook. He turns away from the body and starts making his way back up the embankment — and then all at once he pauses, and looks up. His eyes alight directly on Ben.

Ben shivers automatically upon seeing his face. The man must have been handsome, once — under his hat he has a high forehead, neatly combed white-blond hair, pale Aryan eyes — but now a large, garish scar slices horribly through his features: a twisted line nearly cutting his face in two. _What happened to him, my God?_ The man’s eyes fix inquisitively on Ben for a second or two, chilling him to his core — and then he turns away.

“Ben. _Ben,”_ Hux is saying. He taps Ben’s shoulder, looking quizzically at him. “Come on, we’re going to be late for school.”

Ben looks up. His three friends are no longer watching the scene on the shoreline, apparently having grown bored once the body was recovered. Karo frowns at him, her eyes clearly asking, _Have you gone mad?_

“Sorry. Let’s go,” Ben says, and starts walking briskly, leaving Hux and the others scrambling to catch up. He shakes his head as if shaking off a trance, but is unable to rid himself of the cold, lingering feeling of the scarred man’s eyes on him — as if he knew something secret about Ben; could see inside his very soul. This thought is discomfiting in the extreme: the contents of Ben’s soul, if he does indeed possess one, would not likely be pleasing to a Gestapo officer of any stripe.

Hux falls into step beside him. Behind them, Ben can hear Dietrich telling Karoline excitedly about the new swing records he’s hoping to find at the docks later tonight: “Frederic told me he’d keep an eye out for the Count Basie album I’m looking for, and I have a good feeling that tonight might be the night…”

“Ben. Is everything all right?” Hux asks him, his voice low, trusting that the others are absorbed enough in their own conversation not to eavesdrop on theirs. “You went away for a moment back there.”

Ben looks at his friend, his brows drawing together. “Did I? I’m sorry — it was that man, on the shoreline. The Gestapo officer in the hat. He looked right at me, and I — it frightened me.” He gives a half-smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It was silly.”

“Hey. They haven’t caught us yet,” Hux says quietly, correctly interpreting Ben’s unvoiced concerns. But Dietrich, catching up, overhears, and — thankfully — misunderstands:

“We got out of the HJ, but we won’t get out of the army,” he predicts worriedly. “Nobody gets out of the army.”

Ben and Hux exchange a glance. They haven’t told either of their other best friends about the real nature of their relationship, so as not to endanger them, should it ever come to that. But sometimes, Ben thinks Karo might be onto them. If so, he doesn’t think she’d _say_ anything, knowing the dangers as well as they do; but there are some times when her gaze lingers on them — her blonde brows furrowing in a way that suggests gears turning in her brilliant brain — that makes him think she knows more than she’s letting on.

But Dietrich remains safely and blissfully ignorant. If Hux’s words had been remarked upon by someone cleverer or more malicious than sweet, feeble Meissner, it could have spelled serious trouble for the two of them. As it is, though, Ben’s relieved to go along with his misinterpretation, because Dietrich is, in fact, quite correct on this front. The three boys should, technically speaking, have joined the _Hitlerjugend_ by now; Karo, for her part, has also been dodging membership in the _Bund Deutscher Mädel,_ the League of German Girls.

Ben turns around to reply to Dietrich, arms spread wide as he speaks:

“We don’t have to join the army _yet,_ though — Hey!” Ben spots a familiar figure over Dietrich’s shoulder. He frowns. _“Renate!”_

“Don’t call me that,” retorts his cousin, her little girl’s voice resolute and haughty. She skips closer to Ben and his friends, her brown braids swinging. “Hello Hux, Dietrich, Karo!” Rey says cheerily, unbothered by the less-than-warm welcome Ben’s given her.

“Don’t follow us around,” Ben shoots back, rolling his eyes. “Go on, Rey, go home, or Tante Lea will worry —”

“I saw a couple of HJs beating up a swing boy in the alleyway around the corner,” Rey interrupts him, blinking her big eyes serenely.

Ben, Hux and Karo exchange a glance. Dietrich swallows nervously. Ben looks at his cousin: “You’d better not be lying.”

She’s not lying. Rey leads the four of them into the alleyway, where the sounds of a brawl can be heard: the dull thud of fists meeting skin, the grunts and hard breaths of someone punching or being punched. They hurry down the alley, and, sure enough, find a young man with long hair on the ground, being kicked at by five boys in full HJ uniform. Hux steps in to intervene at once.

“Playing cowboys and Indians, are we?” he asks coolly.

“Can we play too?” Ben adds, taking hold of his closed umbrella like a club and coming to stand at Hux’s side.

“Four against five. That’s still not a fair fight,” Hux observes, eyes fixed on the HJs. The boy on the ground moans in pain.

“Don’t you mean five against three and a _girl?”_ one of HJs sneers, his eyes flicking lasciviously up and down Karo’s tall form. One of his cronies whistles at her. Karo bares her teeth at him in response, and Ben almost laughs: he knows she could punch out all of these bastards without so much as breaking a sweat.

 _“Two_ girls!” Rey interjects bravely, sticking her hands on her hips and trying to look fearsome. “That makes five against five, a fair fight!”

At once Ben grabs her arm and pulls her behind him. _“No,_ Rey. Go home.”

The HJs laugh cruelly. “What about one against one, _Swing Heine?”_ their apparent leader asks of Hux, stepping forward and pulling out a switchblade.

Hux’s face darkens. He shoves his books at Ben, and, pushing him and Rey further behind him, steps up to meet the HJ. The two hover for a moment — and then Hux lashes out, using his own closed umbrella to strike and dodge the HJ’s blows. They seem closely matched, at first, both lean and wiry, strong; but then almost immediately Hux knocks the switchblade from the HJ’s hand. Karo, Ben, and Dietrich — and Rey — all whoop for him, while the other HJs stand stupidly by, doing nothing to intercede on their leader’s behalf.

Soon enough Hux takes his opponent down, spying a chance to hook his umbrella handle around the HJ’s booted ankle and, almost effortlessly, flip him to the ground; and then, for good measure, he kicks him once in the ribs, looking down at him in distaste. “Pig,” he comments idly.

The HJ groans, wiping his bleeding nose and holding up his hands in surrender. “What are you, a kike-lover?” he spits. Hux frowns.

“Hux,” Ben says, gesturing with his chin to the boy who Rey had seen being beaten up in the first place. He’s still huddled on the ground, out of the way of the fighting, and when he turns wide timid eyes on Hux it becomes clear that he’s not a swing boy at all. Long curls hang down by his ears, and he stands with difficulty, gathering up a scattered stack of books with their titles written in Hebrew on the spines. “He’s Jewish,” Ben says.

“Thank you,” says the boy in an accented voice, clutching his books to his chest and limping out of the alleyway with his head down. “Thank you.” His nose is bleeding.

The HJ stands too, breathing hard and putting his hands to his own nose to see if it’s still dripping. “You keep helping them,” he pants, snarling at Hux, “and we’ll deal with you the way we deal with all traitors.”

Hux moves lightning-fast. He throws one final blow into the HJ’s stomach with his umbrella, punctuating his words: “I’m _not_ a traitor! I’m a cowboy, and you’re a pansy,” he taunts them. He brandishes the umbrella handle-first, faking swipes at their heads until they cower and turn tail. “Now get out of here,” he calls vehemently after them.

Hux goes back to rejoin his friends, staring, his freckled nose wrinkled in disgust, at the HJs’ retreating backs until they’re completely out of sight. Karo, Ben, and Dietrich are looking at him in an impressed silence, but it’s Rey to whom Hux turns, his eyes sharp with disapproval.

Rey fidgets under his gaze, but keeps her eyes fixed, defiant, on his face. “Looked like a swing boy to me. How was I supposed to know?” she asks defensively.

Ben sighs. “C’mon, Rey.” He turns and leads the group out of the alleyway; Dietrich beams at Hux and claps him on the shoulder as they go. “We’ll be late for school.”

*

“What did you do today?” Rey asks Ben, in the hallway outside their flat that night. Ben has just picked Rey up from her friend Jessika’s house, and they walked home together. “Did you and your friends go to the docks?”

“Yeah, we went down after school; Dietrich’s new Basie record came in,” Ben replies, unlocking the door and pushing it open. “Hux and I didn’t find anything we liked, though. Maybe next time.”

“So what’re you doing tomorrow? Can I come dancing with you?” Rey pesters, ignoring his answer. Tomorrow is Saturday: she knows there’ll be dancing. She goes up on tip-toe to hang her coat on the peg next to Ben’s.

“Rey.” Ben sighs, hanging up his hat. “I don’t think —”

“I _saw_ you looking at me; you can’t deny it.” Ben is interrupted by a raised voice coming from the living room. He moves that way, and is shocked to see a large, unfamiliar man in the brown uniform of the _Schutzstaffel_ , gripping his mother’s arms to restrain her.

 _“ Hey!”_ Ben shouts. “What are you _doing?”_

The SS man slaps Lea across the face. She cries out.

“Don’t _touch her!”_ Ben yells, tearing into the living room with Rey hot on his heels.

“Tante Lea!” Rey cries, as Ben storms to the SS man and wrenches his hands off his mother.

“God _damn_ you,” he snarls, deflecting the officer’s attempt to punch him, and catching up his arm in one large hand. But the SS man is bigger and stronger than him; he shoves Ben back, forcing him down into a chair, his broad face contorted in an ugly scowl.

“No, _don’t — Ben!”_ Lea cries. Ben stands up and starts striking at the officer again, hands flying, eyes dark and full of rage. Lea goes quickly to her son and lays her hands on his arms, pleading, “Ben, Ben, _stop!”_ She catches him by his lapels and looks up into his eyes. “No. _No.”_

Ben’s face is contorted in fury, his long hair falling in his face. His mother looks beseechingly at him. “I’m all right,” she promises. Mother and son stare at each other, breathing hard. “I’m all right.”

Lea turns back to the SS officer, who is, Ben notes, infuriatingly unscathed. His anger boils hot in his chest — _who is he, how_ dare _he come into our home and lay his hands on my mother —_ but he keeps it down, not wanting to upset his mother further. “Herr Hentz was just leaving,” Lea says coolly.

“I thought a woman of your special background would value my protection,” Herr Hentz says, his tone clipped and arrogant. He fetches his jacket from where it’s tossed over a chair and makes to go. “Your boy needs a haircut,” he adds with disdain.

Ben clenches his fists. Lea steps closer between him and Herr Hentz. “That’s our business.”

“Perhaps not,” Hentz says brusquely, putting on his overcoat with his hard eyes fixed on Ben.

“We have nothing to fear,” Lea insists, her voice cold and sharp-edged. “For six years I have proven my loyalty.”

“Then you ought to demand _absolute_ loyalty,” Herr Hentz interrupts her. “Youth of his sort belong in a work camp.”

 _Youth of his sort._ Ben tenses. He knows he means —  _must_ mean — swing kids; _there’s no way he could know about anything else —_ but the words give him a chill all the same.

“Goodnight,” Herr Hentz says curtly. He strides out of the living room toward the front door, his boots clacking loudly on the wooden floor. Ben and his family stare mutely after him, not moving — and then all of a sudden there’s a knock at the door: three raps in a row, crisp and businesslike. Ben frowns. Herr Hentz turns on his heel to fix his gaze on Lea. “Who are you expecting?” he enquires sharply.

“No one,” Lea says truthfully, looking just as confused as Ben feels. She turns to him. “Benjamin, tell whoever it is to go away,” she requests. Ben sees now that her lower lip is bleeding.

“Mama —” Ben begins.

“Do what I tell you.”

Ben remains motionless for a moment. He can hear his heart thudding in his ears. Then he turns to Rey, whose eyes are saucer-wide, and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder — “C’mon,” he says softly, and shepherds her down the hall to their room before going to answer the door.

When he opens the door, the man standing on the threshold is immediately familiar. His face is very pale, and his hair under his hat is so blond as to appear nearly white, receding from a curiously high forehead — traversed by a thick, deep, twisting scar.

 _The man from the water._ Ben’s stomach gives a lurch.

It’s impossible to tell whether the man remembers him from this morning or not. His cold blue eyes fix on Ben, but his face bears no hint of recognition as he says pleasantly, “Good evening. Is Frau Solberg at home?”

Ben hardly has time to reply before Herr Hentz has stepped in between the two of them, demanding, “Who is it?” He surveys the man’s face, and says suspiciously, _“Heil Hitler.”_ He snaps a salute.

The man on the doorstep nods. _“Heil Hitler,”_ he replies coolly, giving a well-practised salute in return. “And who are you?”

“I am the _Blockleiter,”_   Herr Hentz says severely. “I was collecting for the Winter Relief. May I be of some service?” Ben stares at his back and seethes.

“No. You may go,” the pale man tells him.

Herr Hentz blinks, offended. With a grunt and a last irritable look back at Ben and his mother, he goes, his nose in the air as he shoves past the scarred man and out into the hall. Ben hears his footsteps receding down the corridor.

“May I help you?” Lea asks the strange man with caution. She sounds exhausted.

“Frau Solberg?” the man confirms. Lea nods. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he says, removing his hat in a gesture of civility that does nothing — in Ben’s opinion, at least — to diminish the sinister aura that hangs about him. “I am Herr Schramm. Are you all right?” he asks, indicating the cut on Lea’s lip.

Lea raises a hand to her mouth, just now noticing that it’s bleeding. “Yes; it’s nothing,” she says.

“Are you going to take my aunt away?” comes Rey’s voice, suddenly, from behind: she hasn’t gone to bed as Ben told her. She sounds small and scared, much different from her usual bright, fearless self.

Lea sighs and goes to hush her niece. “Renate, shh —”

“No one is going to take anybody away, young lady,” Herr Schramm cuts her off, smiling at Rey in what he must imagine to be a kindly manner. “Nothing to worry about, I can assure you.”

His eyes fix on her for a second too long, seeming to appraise her much in the same way he’d done Ben this morning, and again tonight: as if sizing her up for a test, seeing if she’s somehow good enough. Rey shrinks back, brows creasing, and Ben steps protectively to his cousin’s side. Lea frowns slightly at Herr Schramm.

Schramm seems to sense the sudden tension, for he looks quickly back to Lea and says, sounding forced, “But really, you should see to that cut on your face. Do you have some iodine?” He steps past Lea and into the apartment, heading for the bathroom.

“It’s not necessary,” Lea protests, but Herr Schramm is already gone.

Left alone, Ben approaches his mother’s side and leans down to say urgently, “He’s in the Gestapo. I think —”

“Don’t worry,” Lea whispers back. “It’s all right; we’ve done nothing wrong. Just be quiet.”

Herr Schramm emerges from the powder room, carrying a small bottle of iodine and smiling with that same false, strained politesse. His eyes, however, remain cold, with no trace of real kindness — or any emotion — present in them at all. Ben doesn’t trust those eyes.

“Please, sit down,” Schramm says to Lea, and, obediently, she sits down in one of the old mismatched armchairs. “Let me see.” He squats down — officious and too comfortable, as if this is _his_ home and they the uninvited guests — to take Lea’s chin in his hand and dab iodine onto her cut. “This will only sting for a moment.”

Ben’s skin crawls to see this strange, disquieting man touching his mother this way, almost possessive in his ministrations. He thinks again of Schramm’s eerie, empty eyes on Rey, and on himself, seeming to penetrate into the darkest and most secret recesses of his mind; and he knows only one thing: _I want him gone. I don’t want him near my family ever again._

“It should heal in no time,” Schramm is telling Lea.

“Thank you.”

Schramm catches Ben’s suspicious gaze fixed on him. “I can see you’re wondering. I am here on…official business,” he says. “But I hope that we can conclude that as quickly as possible.”

He stands up from his squat in front of Lea’s chair and settles into the facing one, putting one long-fingered hand to his chin. He glances about the parlour, looking, Ben is sure, for a bust of Hitler, a Nazi banner — conspicuously absent from their home. “Ah — do you know a Leonaldo Christoffersen?”

Ben frowns. _Uncle Lando?_

Lea’s face registers shock: she, too, has not heard the name of her late husband’s best friend for years now. But she quickly schools her features back to neutrality, recognising the delicacy of the situation and the potential consequences of a misstep. “Lando?” she answers calmly, her tone betraying nothing. “A long time ago, yes. He was an — associate of my husband’s.”

Herr Schramm nods. “And you have not seen him recently?” he asks, too casually.

Lea shakes her head, wary. “No.” She glances over her shoulder at Ben. “The last time was probably six years ago — before my husband and my brother passed away.” Ben can tell it still pains her to speak of his late father, Hans, and of her twin brother, Rey’s father Lukas Himmel.

“I’m sorry,” Schramm says — but his tone has not changed, remaining detached and insincere.

Lea looks up. “What has he done?”

“It’s unimportant,” Schramm dismisses, too briefly. “Have any other of your husband’s associates tried to contact you?”

“No,” Lea answers, cautious now. “Since his death I’ve had nothing to do with any of his friends.” Herr Schramm looks inquisitively at her: _Is that all?_

Lea swallows. Ben hates to see his mother — his fierce, independent, strong-willed mother — reduced to fright and uncertainty by this awful man. “I took a job at the Farben factory and have devoted myself to the Reich,” Lea tells him, with a hint of defiance, trying to prove herself and daring him to challenge her all at once. “And to my family.”

Herr Schramm smiles at this, a tiny, false thing. “Well, you have raised two fine children.” He gestures to Ben and Rey, standing motionless near the door.

“Renate is my niece,” Lea reminds him automatically.  She winces, after, as if wishing she had not said it.

“Ah. Right.” Schramm clears his throat. “She looks like you.”

“Thank you.”

The air in the room seems to thicken and stretch. Ben feels Rey’s body held rigid at his side, her big eyes wide with suspicion. He can’t bear Schramm’s presence any longer — their home does not feel safe with him in it. Ben coughs loudly, and the tense silence is broken.

Lea springs into action. She rises, smoothing down her skirt, and goes to his side in elaborate concern, though Ben is sure she knows he’s faking. “Benjamin, are you all right?” she asks him, pressing a hand to his forehead.

“I’m fine, Mama. Excuse me,” Ben says, shooting a glance at Schramm.

This last now stands too, his hat in his hands. “It’s I who must excuse myself, Frau Solberg,” he says to Lea. “I have all the information I need.” He moves to the front door, and Lea trails him, seemingly not knowing what else to do. “If there is anything — if I can help in any way,” Schramm tells her somewhat stiffly, taking out a business card and pressing it into her hand. “Please.” His eyes linger on her face for a moment too long. Ben clears his throat.

Herr Schramm glances over his shoulder at Ben and Rey. “Goodbye,” he says, taking the hint. He nods once more to Lea and then, at last, is gone.

The door shuts behind him and Lea exhales in relief. Ben goes to her, supports her weight as she sags into his arms. _“Mein Gott,”_ she whispers. “Why did he come? I don’t know what he wants with us — with Lando, of all people…I had thought they were finished with us.”

“We’re fine, Mama,” Ben soothes her, helping her into the kitchen to sit down. “Everything is fine. He said he had everything he needed, didn’t he? He won’t bother us again.”

“Don’t worry, Tante Lea,” Rey chips in, coming round to hug her aunt tightly. “Nobody got taken away!”

Lea gives a weak laugh at this. “Yes, Rey, you’re right; and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it.” She sighs heavily. “Go to bed, you two. It’s late, especially for you, Rey,” she tells them, and she sounds so weary and shaken that they obey at once, even impish Rey, who normally begs for bedtime story after bedtime story about her father’s and uncle’s adventures as pilots in the war.

“Goodnight, Mama.” Ben kisses his mother’s cheek.

“Goodnight, Tante Lea.” Rey mirrors him.

“Goodnight, Ben. Goodnight, Rey.”

They leave her there, her elbows on the table and her head propped in her hands, staring into nothingness. Ben looks back on his way down the hall and sees his mother sigh, closing her eyes. Her shoulders tremble. A frisson of anger runs through Ben.

_He will never come near her again. I'll make sure of it._

Ben changes into his pyjamas and brushes his teeth in the bathroom after Rey has had her turn. He drags a comb through his long hair and then goes back into the bedroom, hanging today’s shirt over the armoire door. A swing record is playing on their old phonograph, and as he passes, Ben removes the needle. The music stops.

Rey is sitting on her bed, holding a photograph. When Ben comes in, she looks up, and asks without preamble, “Were our papas communists?”

Ben is taken aback. “What? Where’d you get that idea?”

Rey shrugs, looking abashed. She glances back down at the photo. “I don’t know. Isn’t that why they arrested them?”

Ben frowns. He goes to his own bed and climbs under the covers, tossing his dressing-gown to the end of the bed. “They weren’t communists.”

“Then what’d they do?” Rey presses.

“I don’t know everything, Rey! It was six years ago,” Ben chides her. “I don’t remember.” He switches off his bedside light and lays down, not wanting to continue this conversation.

“Well, you remember more than I do,” Rey persists. “I was only three.”

Ben shifts on his pillow and makes no response.

“I remember they took my papa away,” Rey goes on. “And Tante Lea came and got me and brought me here to live with you. But your papa was gone, too.”

Ben is silent.

“But then they came back after a long time,” Rey says. “And they were sick.”

“So?” Ben asks coldly. He closes his eyes.

Rey is quiet for a moment. Then she asks, with all the frankness of her youth, “Did they make them sick in prison?”

“I don’t _know,”_ Ben insists, eyes still closed. “Go to sleep. I have to work in the morning.”

Rey’s light is still on; he knows she’s not finished. Sure enough, after a moment:

“But they loved us,” Rey says quietly. “Didn’t they?”

Ben cannot find the words to answer her. He stays silent and pretends to be asleep.

“Ben. _Ben.”_ Rey knows he’s faking, he can tell; but finally, she lets it drop.

Ben hears her shuffling about, laying down the framed photograph of their fathers from their time in the air force — he can picture it now: blond Lukas laughing with tall, gruff Hans’ arm around his shoulders, the two of them young and jaunty in their army grey. He hears her turn her light out and then shift around under the covers. Soon, her breathing grows slow and even with the easy rhythm of sleep.

But sleep does not find Ben for a long time. He opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling, images from the day rushing back to him: the awful bloated corpse of the drowned man from this morning; Herr Schramm’s scar, and his unsettling eyes fixing Ben’s; and now this evening, Herr Hentz assaulting his mother, and all the unpleasantness that followed. _Schramm,_ Ben thinks. _It’s like he followed me. What does he know? What does he want?_

He shivers. He knows he’ll never get to sleep if he keeps thinking about Schramm. Instead, he searches for more pleasant memories of the day. He recalls leaving school this afternoon with Hux and Dietrich and Karo; the boys had been teasing a couple of girls in their class, serenading them with swing tunes on the sidewalk. Karo had grabbed Dietrich and waltzed him around, and then Hux, laughing, had taken Ben’s arm and danced with him too, singing grandiosely all the while:

_“You go to my head; you linger like a haunting refrain, and I find you spinning around in my brain, like the bubbles in a glass of champagne…”_

Ben smiles to himself: seeing the crinkle of Hux’s green eyes as he grinned up at him, feeling his light touch on the small of his back. He feels a familiar rush of desire for him, and soothes himself with the knowledge that he’ll see him tomorrow, and then again on Monday at school, just like he always does — and always will. _We’ve been careful. We’ll be all right._

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song mentioned is [You Go to My Head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJkprBT0CsM), originally by J. Fred Coots, and here performed by the Larry Clinton Orchestra and Bea Wain. [Here's](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/158239278896/it-dont-mean-a-thing-chapter-2-kitseybarbours) this week's chapter on my Star Wars blog, and [here](http://longstoryshortikilledhim.tumblr.com/post/158239026846/it-dont-mean-a-thing-by-huxes-kylux-wwii) is a fantastic moodboard by [Johanna](http://longstoryshortikilledhim.tumblr.com)!!


	3. Chapter 3

*

Ben is still thinking of Hux the next morning, after he has eaten a brief breakfast of eggs and tea with his mother and Rey in their tiny, sunlit kitchen. When he has kissed the two of them goodbye, he makes his way, on foot, downtown, to the bookshop where he’s had a job on-and-off for a year now, delivering merchandise to older customers in their homes whenever the shop’s owner needs him to.

He thinks of Hux on the whole walk there, anticipating their plans for tonight. Ben has been invited over when he finishes work, “to study” — which really means that they will go up to Hux’s room and lock the door, and kiss and touch in quiet bliss until Elena knocks on the door and says, _It’s getting late, Master Brandeis; will Master Solberg be going soon or should I make up a cot in your room?_ And then Ben will telephone his mother and ask if he might spend the night, they have so much work to do, and she will say, _Yes, of course, good luck with your revision,_ and the cot will go ignored as Ben and Hux curl into each other in Hux’s big warm bed, revelling in their secret and each other. They have done this countless times and no one has been the wiser. _We are dedicated students,_ Hux told Lea, smiling genially after walking Ben home one morning. _And we work so well together._

Ben is _still_ thinking of Hux as he takes the brown-paper-wrapped books from the shop’s owner, Herr Schummler, and he is halfway out the door, trying to calculate how long it will take him to deliver these parcels, when Schummler calls, half-amused, half-annoyed, “Benjamin! Don’t you need the addresses?”

Ben turns back at once, jolted out of his reverie. He goes back to Schummler’s desk, smiling meekly. “Sorry.”

“Distracted today,” Herr Schummler comments with a knowing smile. Ben feels his face colour, and braces himself for further questioning; but none comes. “Nasty bruise,” Schummler observes, frowning up at him and noticing it for the first time. “What happened?”

Ben is saved from having to explain by the tinkling of the bell over the shop’s door, heralding someone’s arrival. Herr Schummler looks up, and Ben glances over his shoulder.

“Good morning,” says the customer, a middle-aged man who removes his hat respectfully as he greets them. His nut-brown hair shines with pomade and his eyebrows arch sharply over inquisitive eyes. “I’m looking for” — he glances at Ben, and then at Herr Schummler — “a rare edition of Faust.”

Schummler pauses for only an instant. He gives a brief nod. “Wait one second. I think I have just the thing.” He scribbles down the last of the addresses and then brandishes the paper at Ben: “Benjamin, here it is.”

Ben nods, and turns to go. As he is closing the door behind him, he sees Schummler stand, turn to the bookshelf behind his desk, where Ben knows the most precious volumes are kept, and take down an old book with elaborate gold etchings on its spine. He says something to the man, who nods, and then he disappears into the back.

Ben thinks nothing of it. Schummler’s shop specialises in rare and antique books, and, in the time that Ben’s worked there, it has had, if anything, an increase in customers — and at a time when one might think demand for such things would disappear completely. It’s reassuring to Ben that people still care about literature at a time like this, when, as Schummler had joked drily to him once, “No one reads; they are all too busy going to parades.”

He smiles to himself as he looks down at the first address — it’s close, just a couple streets away, in an apartment complex he thinks he’s visited before. He has only a few stops to make, and then he and Hux will have nearly all day to themselves. Ben strolls down a main thoroughfare with his parcels tucked under his arm, a swing tune playing in his head as he takes in the usual sights and sounds of the Saturday-morning city: cars passing and honking in the street, drably-dressed housewives doing their weekly shopping, young men on bicycles ringing their bells…And then across the street something catches his eye.

One of the double doors to a large, old, two-storey stone house is open. A dark-haired soldier in Nazi brown comes out of the house bearing a large basket, and Ben notices for the first time that other personal effects and pieces of furniture — a trunk, an end-table, some antique chairs — are assembled on the pavement out front. Were it not for the Nazis, it would seem like an ordinary moving-day — but the soldiers’ presence lends a seamy aspect to the otherwise innocent scene.

And now as Ben watches, a second Nazi takes up a can of white paint and paints a word on the one closed door. _“Verräter,”_ Ben mouths to himself, as the soldier adds the final _R. Traitor_. He frowns.

Now a third Nazi comes out of the house, carrying a lamp, a clock, and a heavy wooden radio. Ben’s heart skips a beat in anger when he recognises the unpleasant-looking man as Herr Hentz, the Nazi who was threatening his mother last night. _That bastard!_

Hentz has a brief conversation with his fellow soldiers, indicating the radio. They nod, and Hentz deposits the lamp and clock with the other items on the pavement — but takes the radio for himself, hefting it under his arm and gripping tight to it with his wool-gloved hand. He leaves; a passing car obscures him from Ben’s view, and when it has driven by, he is gone.

Ben remains where he is, feeling deeply suspicious. What are the Nazis doing in that house? And, more importantly, why have its occupants been branded traitors?

A girl approaches, fast, on her bicycle, ringing the bell for him to get out of the way. It shakes Ben out of his trance, and he steps back, calling “Sorry” to the girl as she passes. He looks down at the addresses in his hand, and knows he should be going; he could have made the first stop by now. With a last glance at the looted house, Ben carries on his way, but he can’t shake his feeling of unease.

He is hit with a sudden, sickening image of coming home to his own apartment one day and finding all their belongings in the hall: his mother in tears, Rey shaking and scared, and _Verräter_ in stark white letters on the door. He imagines the hard-faced soldiers come to take him away — for it _would_ be his fault, of course, if anything happened. It would be his fault, for not having been careful enough. And he imagines Hux being beaten, abused, called a traitor, a degenerate, and worse — for if they found out about Ben, they’d learn his secret too. _Hux’s father would probably kill him himself._

Ben shudders.

_How can I love him and still keep us safe?_

*

His first delivery takes his mind off things, for a little while at least. Ben double-checks the address and then climbs the stairs to a warmly-lit, brown-papered corridor on the third floor of an apartment building that is much nicer than his own. He finds the flat he’s looking for — a pair of handsome, dark wooden doors, with a nameplate on one side that reads _Fr. M. Kannenberg._ He looks down, again, at his list of names and addresses, confirms that this is whom he wants, and then presses the buzzer.

 _Bzzt._ Barely a second after he’s rung, the little gold cover of the peep-hole is lifted aside. “Delivery from Herr Schummler,” Ben leans in to say to whoever’s on the other side. The door opens. Ben, eyes still fixed at peep-hole-level, finds himself staring at empty space — and then a wry, old-sounding voice from somewhere near his breastbone says, “Are you a Solberg, young man?”

Ben looks down. He finds a tiny, wrinkled old woman — not even five feet tall, by Ben’s estimate — with skin as brown as chocolate, as leathery as a walnut. Her white hair is hidden by a patterned scarf tied turban-like around her head; a few wisps stick out crazily over her forehead, giving her the look of a tiny, ancient mad scientist. Her eyes are coffee-coloured and enormous, magnified to twice their size by huge, thick-lensed spectacles, and she’s peering up at Ben with a look of intense scrutiny that borders on suspicion, as if she's trying to determine whether he’s the ruffian who rode his bike through her rosebushes.

Ben likes her immediately. He’s also a little bit scared of her.

“I’m sorry?” he asks, his delivery all but forgotten in the wake of her surprising question. He looks down at the paper in his hand once again. “Ah — Frau Kannenberg?”

“Yes, young man, that’s me — but I want to know who _you_ are. I know those eyes,” she muses, actually going up on tip-toe to get a better look at his face. Her accent is thick, not entirely German. She nods with satisfaction. “A Solberg. Without a doubt.”

“Er, ah — yes, my name is Benjamin Solberg — but how on Earth did you know that?” Ben splutters. He glances about the hallway, suddenly jittery: _Have I been followed? Am I being watched? Who_ is _this woman?_

“I knew your father,” Frau Kannenberg announces.

Ben blinks, shocked: “You knew my —”

“I believe you have a delivery for me?” the old woman interrupts. She blinks expectantly at him, her huge eyes impatient. Bewildered, Ben hurries to locate the parcel addressed to her: it’s the heaviest one, probably containing two or three books. He fumbles to pass it to her and she hums in satisfaction as she takes it.

“There we are. Thank you, young man,” she says, and nods again. “That will be all, I think.” She starts making to close the door, but Ben — suddenly burning with curiosity, thoughts of his father brought to his mind after his conversation with Rey — instinctively sticks out his foot to stop her.

“Wait!” he insists. “You knew my father? When? How?”

“A matter for another day,” Frau Kannenberg says with such absolute confidence that Ben wonders, for a moment, if she can see the future. Judging by her appearance, he wouldn’t be surprised. “Yes, yes,” she says, offhand, in response to his stricken look; “another time, Benjamin Solberg. I promise you.”

And then, with surprising force, she budges his foot out of the way and closes her apartment door: Ben hears the _click_ of a bolt sliding into place. He stares, dumbfounded, at the polished wood for several moments, his head reeling.

“I know you’re still out there, young man,” comes, suddenly, Frau Kannenberg’s voice from inside. “Move along, now. Another time.”

And Ben finds he can do nothing else but obey the old woman, and trust in her prediction that they will meet again. He locates the next address on his list and leaves the building.

*

A couple hours later Ben finishes his last delivery. He pops back into Schummler’s shop to pick up his pay and then goes home to collect his schoolbooks. He says hello to his mother, who is doing her mending in the parlour; Rey is at a friend’s. And then at last Ben makes his way to Hux’s house, anticipation mounting all the while. He knocks on the door and waits patiently, schooling his features into a mature, composed, not-at-all excited expression —  _I’m here to_ study, _remember —_ in case it’s Elena who opens the door.

But it’s not the housekeeper, it’s Hux himself, and he opens the door beaming and pulls Ben inside by the arm, saying, “I was hoping you’d come early. We’re alone.”

Ben grins hugely back. He sheds his coat and hangs it on the cap of the banister, and Hux takes his hand and leads him, quickly, up the spiral staircase to his bedroom. He shuts the door and locks it behind them and then kisses Ben full on the mouth, his hands coming up to encircle his neck. Ben takes him in his arms, and his hand goes down to curl over Hux’s hip, and Hux smiles, kissing him open-mouthed. “Ben,” he says against his lips, contentedly. “Ben.”

They have been doing this — they have been lovers — for nearly six months now, ever since that night, Hux’s eighteenth birthday, when they shared a bottle of wine after the party, after their friends had gone home. They had been the last ones downstairs, Hux’s parents having gone to bed long ago, their door firmly shut against the noises of swing music and laughter. And they had both been so _happy,_ feeling loose and careless and “blurry,” as Ben would later call it — but, he insists, he knew exactly what he was doing when he kissed Hux the first time, his eyes open and steady on Hux’s as he leaned down and their lips met.

The wine was not to blame for any of it, except perhaps the lack of inhibitions: the lifting, finally, of the barriers that had kept them from each other for months, maybe years, before. Finally, though — in the warmth of the night, the lovely haze of late September — they had made their confessions. _I’ve wanted to do this for as long as I can remember,_ said Ben as he kissed Hux again, wide-eyed still: fearing he would slip away if he did not hold him with his gaze. _I was afraid you’d never want me to._

 _Why didn’t you just ask,_ said Hux, and laughed to see Ben’s expression of betrayal, of shock —  _would it really have been that easy, after all this time? —_ and then he kissed it away, and watched it change to a sweet yearning delight.

And now they are here, months later, still delighting in one another no matter the risks they know they are taking. Hux peels off Ben’s winter layers: sweater unbuttoned and tossed to the side, and then his long-sleeved shirt and undershirt go too, exposing the warm muscled planes of his chest. Impatient, Ben tugs at Hux’s arm, and rids him of his own clothes; tripping over their trouser legs and shivering in the chill, they make their way, laughing, into Hux’s bed, pulling the covers over themselves and clutching at each other.

“Have you been thinking of me?” Hux murmurs, as the blankets settle. The eiderdown over their heads creates an intimate space, a small private universe made only of the two of them: their naked limbs, their hands and lips. Hux’s breath is deliciously warm against Ben’s skin.

Ben shivers. _“Yes,”_ he responds, for he _has_ been, always. He does not have much time, or space, to be alone, at home; but when he does, it is always Hux he thinks of — always memories, or fantasies, of him that he reaches for and finds satiation in. “And you of me?” he asks, low, anxious, knowing the answer but craving it still; and Hux gives a wicked little laugh in response.

“Of course.”

Now Ben’s mouth is everywhere, nipping Hux’s earlobe, sucking at his lower lip, pressing kisses to his neck. Hux sighs in pleasure and strokes Ben’s hair, his shoulders, his back; they are both aroused now. Soon Ben closes his eyes as Hux reaches down to take them both in hand, and burrows his face into the curve of Hux’s shoulder as they finish together, breathing _Hux, Hux, Hux_ into his skin. Hux shivers in his arms; Ben can feel his pulse pounding in the tender skin at the base of his throat.

After, they lie there a little while, warm and sated under the covers. Ben strokes absent circles on Hux’s arm with his thumb, staring at the ceiling in a pleasant daze. After some time Hux gets up and goes to the armoire; Ben, half-reclined against the pillows, watches him, admiring without shame his naked elegant back, the milky skin scattered with freckles. Hux kneels and digs around in the bottom drawer of the armoire, emerging triumphant with a half-empty pack of Lucky Strikes and a battered matchbook. He raises his eyebrows at Ben: “Eureka,” he says, holding aloft his prizes.

Ben sits up in bed, incredulous. “How’d you get those past your father?”

Hux goes to the window and cracks it open. Smoking is frowned upon by the Nazis, and, perhaps more importantly, by Hux’s father, a doctor, who would box his son’s ears if he found his bedroom smelling of smoke. Chilly February air rushes in and goose-pimples Hux’s pale skin; he hastens back to bed.

“I got them _from_ him, actually,” Hux says, grinning, as he pulls a blanket around his slim shoulders. “Or his rubbish bin, at least. One of his patients gave them to him — he’s given up the habit and wanted to avoid future temptation. But my father doesn’t smoke, especially not _American_ tobacco.”

Hux extracts two cigarettes and puts them between his lips; he strikes a match and holds it to the tips of both. He passes one to Ben, and they smoke in a contented silence, their pleasure so much the greater for all that it is forbidden. When they have smoked the fags down to the filters, they go to the window-sill, lean over it, and stub them out on the outside wall of the house where the ashy marks will not be noticed, tossing the butts down to the cobbled street below. They land in a puddle of melting snow.

“Back to bed now, I think,” Ben says, teasing. “It’s too cold out here.” He leans down to press a kiss to Hux’s cheekbone.

“I was going to say we’d best get to studying,” Hux replies, sighing rather mournfully. “I know that’s not _really_ why you’ve come, of course” — he smirks, turning to face Ben and sinking for a moment back into his arms, before stepping away and going to collect his clothes. He re-dresses, moving hurriedly to get warm again. “But we’ve got that Latin test on Tuesday, and while _I’m_ quite comfortable with my conjugations, I have the distinct suspicion that you _aren’t.”_

He punctuates this last with a pinch to Ben’s arm before he hands him his shirt. Ben groans in mock torment, but reluctantly gets dressed, pausing in between articles of clothing to steal a kiss, a tickle, a squeeze from a protesting Hux. “Come _on,_ Ben,” Hux silences him at last. “My parents, or at least Elena, will be home soon. Mother will come check on us and we’ll have to pretend to be very, very busy.”

And sure enough, when Frau Hux comes to knock on her son’s door an hour later, elegant and distracted in a lilac crêpe day-dress, she finds Ben and Hux lying on the floor, Latin grammars and dictionaries and marked-up pieces of paper spread out all around them.

 _“Venio,_ in the present passive subjunctive,"Hux is saying, and after a moment’s hesitation Ben responds, _“Veniar, veniaris, veniatur…”_

“Oh, hello, Benjamin,” Claudia Hux says, delicately interrupting as she pushes open the door, her voice light and airy as the touch of a butterfly’s wings. Ben feels Hux grow tense at his side.

Ben has often gotten the sense that Hux’s mother is not really here, or anywhere, at all — that she barely occupies a physical form, is little more than an effervescence drifting about from day to day in a pretty, perfumed haze. Hux and his mother are not close; although she doted on him as a baby (or so Hux has told Ben, in the late-night hours when he grows less reserved and speaks with more ease), her interest in him has steadily waned as he has grown. _I am a nuisance to her,_ Hux had said once, with little emotion, as if commenting upon the weather. _To both of them, really. They hardly notice me at all, unless I've disappointed them._

“Hello, Frau Hux,” Ben says politely, looking up from their “work” and smiling at her. _“Sie sehen heute Abend sehr schön aus.”_ He still addresses both of Hux’s parents with formal pronouns, although he and Hux have been friends for years. (Lea, by contrast, has always insisted that Hux use _du_ with her.)

 _“Vielen Dank,_ Ben,” Claudia replies, charmed, her grey eyes sparkling at him. She looks to Hux. _“Guten Abend,_ Brandeis,” she says, and to Ben, at least, it appears that her voice has acquired a shade of warmth, some nuance that had not been there before; but Hux does not seem to hear it, and does not respond in kind.

 _“Guten Abend,_ Mutter,” Hux replies stiffly — although Ben thinks he can hear a sort of half-formed longing there, a desire to be _noticed_ , if nothing else. He calls her _Mother,_ not _Mama_ or _Mutti,_ as do most children their age. The title is awkward, dated, and yet Ben has never known him to call her anything else. “Will you be eating with us tonight?”

Claudia shakes her head, and seems almost to adopt a look of sadness, of real regret. “No, _Liebchen,_ I will not,” she says, and though she looks at her son she still seems not to see him. “I came up to tell you that I have an engagement at the Metzgers’ this evening; I hope you will forgive me.” She blinks twice with her long-lashed eyes, almost film-star-like in her movements.

“Of course, Mutter,” Hux murmurs; he has already turned back to the Latin grammar on the ground. “Now, Ben,” he says, deliberate, “ _nolo,_ in the perfect subjunctive.”

Ben hesitates. He looks for a moment more at Claudia, at Claudia being ignored by the son she once worshipped; he sees her hesitating too, not knowing what to do, although surely they have been in this situation before. He swears for a moment he sees a tinge of sadness in her eyes — and then it is gone, as she sweeps a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. (Hux’s red hair is an anomaly, passed down from some great-uncle of his father’s; both his parents are white-blond, snow-blond, German blond, and when they are out as a family they get strange looks, as if he is some faerie child, a changeling, who was swapped in the cradle for the Huxes’ _real_ son.)

“Good luck with your revision, then, boys,” Claudia says, her voice still powder-light. “I will see you later.” And then she is gone, leaving behind a lingering mist of lily-of-the-valley and a subtle, hardly perceptible, silvery coldness in the air. 

There is a brief silence. Without knowing it, Hux has begun picking at the skin of his fingers, around the nails, a persistent nervous tic that he tries fiercely to conceal but that emerges, telling, when he is anxious or under stress. His brows draw down over his eyes, and when he speaks again there is a hint of almost childlike anger just below the surface. _“Nolo,_ Ben. Not to want.”

 _“Noluerim, nolueris, noluerit,”_ Ben says, after a moment. _“Noluerimus, nolueritis, noluerint…”_

They carry on like that until supper is called, and then they go downstairs and eat alone at the great dining-table — Claudia has already left for her party, and Doctor Hux has sent word: he has been held up late at the hospital, he sends his regrets but they should not expect him home until late. The food is delicious, and Ben says so, but Hux only murmurs an indifferent response, clearing his plate with small efficient bites and seeming not to taste it at all.

They go up to bed and Ben makes to touch him again, to kiss him and shake this pall that has fallen over him; but Hux looks him in the eyes and asks, “Please will you just hold me,” and so Ben does. They fall asleep fully clothed, arms entwined, keeping each other safe.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My [main blog](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and my [Star Wars](http://huxes.tumblr.com) blog. So many thanks to my dear [Lucile](https://silivrenelya.tumblr.com/) for the beautiful [moodboard](https://silivrenelya.tumblr.com/post/158525230992/it-dont-mean-a-thing-by-kitseybarbours-huxes)!!


	4. Chapter 4

*

The four of them go to the Bismarck again on Sunday night — Dietrich is playing guitar with the house band. “The Hit-Man meets Count Basie!” the MC introduces him, and the crowd cheers for him, for little Dietrich Meissner sitting on the front of the stage with his shy smile and his wire-rimmed spectacles, his black hair falling in his eyes. With his guitar he’s almost someone else: confident, assured. He nods to the band and they start to play.

_“Meissner!”_ Ben whoops, as the crowd of swing kids shouts and cheers, clapping along to the beat. Dietrich shoots him a smile and then bends back over his guitar, already engrossed in the music.

On the dance-floor, a jam circle forms up right away, with one or two couples taking the lead and jumping into the centre to show off. Ben, Hux, and Karoline stay on the outskirts at first, watching and clapping along, as more and more pairs join in, their moves getting trickier and wilder all the while. Up on stage, Dietrich launches into a solo, and Ben — jiving along on the spot — catches Hux’s eye. Hux glances at him, and a sideways grin tugs at his lips. “Let’s go,” Ben says, winking.

They count themselves in silently, and when the beat hits, Ben grabs Hux’s hand and pulls him to the centre of the circle. The other couples pull back to watch, cheering for them as they start to dance. They make it up as they go along, lindy-hopping and shim-shamming in perfect unison, their hands and legs sharp and loose. They’re good, and they know it, and the crowd of dancers love them for it. Ben is laughing, and there’s a grin on Hux’s face, and they would’ve kept going all night —

But then all at once the band stops playing. The last notes of Dietrich’s guitar twang in empty air, and Ben and Hux freeze.

“The HJs are coming!” gasps a girl in the crowd.

The conductor counts, “A-one, two, three!” and strikes up a new tune. On cue, the formerly swing-dancing couples step tight into closed pairs and start dancing the bland, traditional polka. And not a second too soon: through the doors come a black-mackintoshed Gestapo officer and a whole troop of HJs in full uniform.

Ben sighs. He glances at Hux, who nods, vexed, and they make their way through the crowd to find Karo and their friends from school at a table. Dietrich has come down from the stage, towing his guitar with a look of dejection. “You were great,” Karo tells him as he takes a seat.

“Supermurgatroid, Herr Hit-Man,” Ben adds, clapping Dietrich on the shoulder as he pulls out a chair. Dietrich smiles weakly, still looking disappointed — right back to his usual wallflower self.

“Look at those pansies,” Hux says, jerking his chin in the direction of the HJs.

“They’re all training for the Gestapo,” Ben says with distaste.

“How’d they know we were here tonight?” Dietrich wonders, concerned.

“Probably beat it out of some swing kid,” Hux answers.

“Wonder if any of _them_ like swing,” Dietrich muses. “Or — _liked_ it, I s’pose. Before they joined up.”

“Why the hell would they join up if they did?” Hux retorts sharply.

“They could’ve been forced into it,” Dietrich replies, uncertain.

“It isn’t compulsory,” Ben objects.

Dietrich shakes his head. “It might as well be.”

“Those creeps are too busy marching up and down all day to keep track,” Hux says spitefully.

“Hux is right,” Karo interjects, nodding. “A swing kid couldn’t be a traitor.”

“But —” Dietrich begins hesitantly.

“No,” Hux cuts him off firmly. “No one who likes swing could become a Nazi.”

They all watch the HJs in silence for a moment, each, no doubt, scanning the faces for someone they know — or knew. Ben, at least, finds no one, and if the others do, they say nothing. The HJs look around the crowded club, taking in the polka-ing couples with looks of general suspicion; but apparently they don’t find anything strictly out of order, and soon enough, their leader motions that they leave. Hux gives a derisive sniff as they go.

“Who needs them, anyway?” he asks. “C’mon, let’s have some fun.”

He holds out a hand to Karo: “Dance with me?” She takes it and rises, grinning as she smooths out her dress.

“Ben?” Hux asks. “Coming?”

But Ben stays seated, staring at the place where the HJs had been. He’s distracted, lost in thought.

“Ben?” Hux says again.

“No,” Ben answers finally, tearing his eyes away. “No thanks; I’ll sit this one out.”

“Suit yourself, then,” Hux replies. “C’mon, Karo.” And he leads her out to the floor.

“Are you all right, Ben?” Dietrich asks timidly.

_Is he right? Is Dietrich right? Could a swing kid ever be a Nazi?_ Ben wonders.

He looks back at Dietrich, who’s waiting, worried, for a response.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

*

“Keep that blindfold on,” Karo instructs Dietrich, in his room in the Meissners’ basement the next day after school.

“Blindfold’s on.”

Karo selects a record, puts it on the phonograph and turns the volume up. At the window, Hux is watching the street outside. When he hears the music, Dietrich gives a laugh.

“This is too easy, Karo, come on! _Harlem._ Recorded September the fourteenth, nineteen-thirty-seven. Teddy Foster trumpet, Freddy Gardner alto, Joe Riley —”

“Hey!” Ben says, thundering down the stairs: Hux had seen him hurrying up to the house, chin tucked into his scarf against the wind. “You guys are not gonna _believe_ what just happened.”

Karo and Hux look up expectantly. Dietrich, sitting on his bed, unties his blindfold, an unlit cigarette poking out from between his lips. “This HJ rode by me and whistled the signal,” Ben announces.

“What?” Hux asks.

“This HJ rode by me and whistled _It Don’t Mean a Thing!”_ Ben repeats insistently.

“You’re joking,” Karo says slowly.

“He must’ve been a swing kid!” Ben says. “It’s like — it’s like Dietrich said. A hepcat can’t be broken!”

“What if he was trying to trick you?” Hux asks suspiciously. “Trying to get you to tell him where the next party is, or something?”

“Come on,” Karo protests, as Dietrich gets up to change the record. “It took you a year to learn how to whistle that,” she reminds Hux, smirking.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hux asks, insulted, sitting down in an armchair with a huff.

“It means what it means,” Dietrich pipes up, paging through his enormous record collection in search of the perfect platter.

Ben lights a cigarette. He’s picked up _The New Cab Calloway’s “Hepster’s Dictionary”_ from the table and now opens a page at random, hoping to distract Hux before he starts sulking or getting peeved with their friends. “Quiz time,” he announces. _“Joint is jumping.”_

“The place is lively,” Hux answers at once, standing up and grabbing the book from Ben’s hand. Ben blows a cloud of smoke in his face and Hux waves it away with the dictionary. “Can’t we find something a little more exciting to do?” he complains, fanning himself. “I say we go down to St Pauli and make some new friends,” he says deliberately, with an arrogant cool Ben knows comes only with practise. _But then,_ he thinks, _it’s not only girl-friends you can make in the red-light district…_

“Those kinds of friends cost a lot of money,” Dietrich says nervously.

“Actually, I was thinking about using some of that money you’ve got stashed away,” Hux taunts him, callous. Ben, looking through Dietrich’s records, frowns. Clearly Hux is upset today, spoiling for a fight, and Ben doesn’t know why. He makes him nervous when he’s like this. Ben waits for the blow to fall.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Dietrich answers immediately. “I’m saving that money for a short-wave radio. I wouldn’t spend it on some —  _girl._ ”

Hux doesn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, well, that’s because even if you paid her, you couldn’t get one to go with you,” he says cruelly.

Ben flinches: the other shoe has dropped. Hux taps the ash off his cigarette and looks to him for support, a vicious little smile playing on his lips; but Ben frowns at him, not having it.

Dietrich flushes bright red and looks abruptly miserable. “That’s not —”

He falls silent.

Karo bites her lip; Ben sighs. Hux looks around. “What?” he asks, defensive.

“Hux,” Ben chides him. “Come on.”

Hux sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says to Dietrich, not terribly convincingly. He drums his fingers on the armrests of the chair. “I’m sorry. That was — all right, I went too far. I’m just so _bored,_ is all.”

“Maybe the reason you’re so bored,” Dietrich ventures timorously, accepting his apology with a small vigorous nod, “is because you just don’t have any idea which platters to pick,” he suggests. He’s making a fierce attempt to lighten the mood again, and Ben feels for him. Dietrich goes with difficulty to the shelf by his bed and peers down at the records.

Hux nods. “All right,” he says, gesturing with his cigarette. “Put on that blindfold.”

Dietrich nods, too, and grabs the blindfold from the bed, hauling himself back onto it and tying the blindfold on. “All right, all right, we’ll go right to it!” he says with strained cheer. “Come on, Brandeis,” he entreats him. “Pick any record in the room. Any record,” he says, truly eager now. This is his favourite game; none of the others can ever beat him.

Hux smiles and stands up from his chair, going to the shelf by the bed to pick. Karo and Ben exchange a look of relief: whatever’s bothering Hux today, at least he shook it off quickly.

Hux runs his fingers over the rows and rows of records: “Think I hear a little activity over in the Gene Krupa section,” Dietrich jokes, grinning his timid grin. Hux picks out a stack of platters and brings them over to Ben on the couch.

“I’m waiting, I’m waiting,” Dietrich says.

Hux picks one record out and shows it to Ben: “No, no, that’s too easy,” Ben dismisses. But Hux takes it anyway, and goes over to the phonograph. On the bed, Dietrich takes a deep breath and waggles his fingers in the air as if preparing to do magic.

The turntable is already spinning when Hux puts the record on. Carefully, he takes up the needle and sets it down — but he just misses the groove. The needle scratches, a jarring sound in the air. Dietrich yanks off his blindfold in a second.

“I’m sorry, my hand slipped,” Hux says immediately, catching the look of shock in Dietrich’s eye.

“Did you do that on purpose?” Dietrich asks, genuinely upset.

“No, no, come on, I’m sorry, okay?” Hux protests. “I’ll replace it.”

“From where?” Dietrich asks, limping over to the record player, his brows drawing down. His glasses are in his hand, and his eyes look small and sad. “Alberti doesn’t have anything left. I’ll have to go down to the docks,” he says, and his mouth twists as if he’s trying not to cry. “And besides,” he adds quietly, almost to himself, “you wouldn’t know what to look for.” Dietrich takes the damaged record from the phonograph and carries it protectively to the reading-lamp on his bed, inspecting it with anxious care.

Hux prickles at that. “Well, I’m sorry I’m not as smart as you,” he says icily, his peevish humour returned. Ben frowns. “Besides, the only reason you know all these hits is because you can’t dance to them,” Hux adds, and his voice is hard and spiteful.

“Hux!” Ben says at once. Dietrich freezes, swallowing hard as if to keep down tears. Hux takes a drag of his cigarette and doesn’t look at any of them.

Dietrich straightens up. He takes a couple hesitant steps away from the bed, still holding the scratched record. His bottom lip is trembling. And then he drops the record to the ground.

It shatters on impact, the noise as loud as breaking glass. Karo gasps aloud and Ben’s fists clench instinctively.

“Can you go?” Dietrich requests, his voice shaking. “Please? Just — just go.”

“Dietrich,” Ben protests slowly, his voice low, “it was a mistake. His hand slipped,” he says, acutely conscious of Hux, tense with anger at his side. He’s not sure why he’s defending him at all.

“Why do you always go along with him?” Dietrich whispers.

Ben swallows hard. “I’m not going along with anything — it was an accident,” he repeats stupidly, and he feels Karo’s gaze like daggers boring into him. _Shut up. Shut up. Stop talking._

“Get out of here,” Dietrich says again, his voice threatening to break into sobs. “Both of you. Please. Just go.”

“Dietrich —” Hux begins.

_“Go.”_

“Okay,” Hux says viciously, standing up and shrugging on his sweater. “To hell with you. Just sit around here all day, with your records, whacking off, okay?” He grabs his jacket, tugs that on too. _“Okay?”_ he repeats.

Dietrich is still gulping back tears as he picks up the shattered pieces. Karo gets up to help: she glances at Hux and her eyes are cold. “Leave, Hux,” she tells him. “Get out of here.”

“C’mon, Ben.” Hux fastens his jacket and leaves the room, throwing a dark look over his shoulder at Ben.

Ben hesitates a moment, torn, pained. But he knows he has to follow, knows he’s _going_ to follow, even if it’s wrong — because it’s Hux, and that means he has no choice.

He glances at Karo (Dietrich won’t look up), and it only hurts him more to see that she knows he’s going to, too.

*

“You shouldn’t have said that thing about him not being able to dance, Hux,” Ben says as they walk through the market on their way to Ben’s flat. Hux is sulking, his mouth hard and angry, his hands jammed in his coat.

“And why not? It’s true,” Hux retorts, although some of the malice has gone from his voice. “I wish he wouldn’t act like he’s smarter than everybody else all the time,” he bursts out suddenly.

Ben frowns. That’s hardly how _he_ sees Dietrich, but he knows that he and Hux have always had a kind of friendly rivalry between them — who gets better grades, who has a bigger repertoire of swing tunes, who knows the most and newest hepcat lingo — and it’s only recently, apparently, that this “friendly” competition has become…less friendly. He would speak up to defend poor Dietrich, but Ben decides it’s best to keep silent to avoid provoking Hux further, high-strung as he is today.

They round a corner, and Ben glances down the street — and then pauses, recognising someone coming out of a bakery. Hux makes to keep walking, but then notices that Ben’s stopped, and comes back to his side.

“Look at that son-of-a-bitch,” Ben says, indicating Herr Hentz, who’s stepping out into the street holding a ribbon-wrapped pie. The bakery shopgirl — big-bosomed, vapid; her frilly pile of dark-blonde curls would better suit a younger woman — nods and smiles as she closes the door behind him. “They all think they can get away with whatever they want.”

Through the window, they can see a fine dark-wooden radio on the bakery counter. Ben knows it at once to be the one he’d seen on the street the other day, taken from the _traitors’_ home. “He stole that radio from someone they arrested,” Ben tells Hux. He stares down the street, eyes narrowed, deep in thought. “What if we lifted it?” he suggests after a moment.

Hux nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says, warming to the idea. He looks apologetic when he adds, “We could give it to Dietrich. Pick up Benny Goodman live.”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “Can you imagine the look on his face when we walk in with it?”

Hux looks at Ben, and Ben looks at Hux, and he gives a roguish smile, already thinking of this as revenge for the way Hentz had stolen from those people — and the way he’d treated Ben’s mother.

“What do we do?” Hux asks.

They’re standing near a fruit-and-vegetable stall. Ben spies it and has an idea. He goes up to it, and selects a tomato from the stack, squeezing it in his hand to test for ripeness. He throws it up and catches it, and turns back to Hux, smirking. “C’mon.”

_“Fräulein,”_ Ben cries, a couple minutes later, bursting through the front door of the bakery. The shopgirl looks up in alarm, open-mouthed: the tomato has been smashed on the front of Ben’s shirt, looking just convincingly enough like blood. “Oh, Fräulein, _help me,”_ Ben moans, stumbling drunkenly up to the bakery counter, where the woman stands paralysed. “I’m bleeding,” Ben groans. “Some HJs — they stabbed me —”

The stolen radio is playing a peppy, lively polka. The petrified woman reaches blindly over the counter as Ben staggers forward, as if to take him in her arms; “I’m _bleeding!”_ Ben repeats insistently, his voice climbing to a fever-pitch as he lurches around the little shop, the shopgirl trailing him helplessly and exclaiming _“Oh!”_ every time he moves.

“Help me, _help me,”_ Ben babbles hoarsely, changing the trajectory of his drunkard’s walk towards the door to the back room. _“I’m bleeding,”_ he repeats once more, for good measure. He’s enjoying his little act immensely. Through the front window, he catches sight of Hux hovering just outside the door. Hux gives him a thumbs-up, and Ben grins, quickly, before announcing yet again, “They _stabbed me,_ Fräulein!”, just in case she’d seen.

As he approaches the back room, the shopgirl hurries to get behind him, and exclaims loudly as he stumbles back into her arms: _“Mein Gott, mein Gott!”_ She can’t support his weight, and with a hopeless wail from her and another beleaguered moan from Ben, they tumble back onto the floor.

The radio keeps up its jaunty polka as Hux rushes in from outside, vaults over the counter and seizes it. It’s still plugged-in, though, and as he’s fumbling hurriedly with the cord, the shopgirl makes to get up from the ground, exclaiming in offense as Ben pulls her back down: “Wait, wait, no, no, no, I’m hurt badly!” he pleads, all at once suspiciously coherent. He glances at Hux and sees him struggling, and silently wills him to hurry. “Don’t leave me!”

“Let go!” the woman protests, as Ben clings desperately to her arm.

The polka stops abruptly: Hux has disentangled the radio and now shoves it under his arm with a triumphant grin. He bolts for the door, hopping the counter awkwardly with the bulky weight of the radio on his hip. The shopgirl hauls herself to standing and sees at once what’s going on: _“Hey!”_ she cries out, eyes wide. “What are you doing? _Help!”_

She casts a frantic glance back to Ben on the floor, and then out the door at Hux’s fleeing form, and then at Ben again — and then she makes up her mind and races into the street. _“Help!”_ she wails, stretching it out to several syllables. A few heads in the crowded street turn to look at her. She points down the street at Hux, who’d turned around when she yelled and now freezes. _“He stole my radio!”_

Ben flings himself out the door and down the street after him, his coat and hair in disarray, his shirt still stained tomato-juice red. He zips past the distraught shopgirl with a grin on his face: the woman screams, a short, sharp shriek, and then claps her hand over her mouth in shock. The passers-by continue on their way around her, ignoring.

Ben catches up with Hux at the lamppost where he’s paused, the radio tucked out of sight behind the pole; he claps him on the back, snickering, and Hux shoots him a sly smile. But then the woman screams again, and two Gestapo officers appear out of nowhere, and Hux’s smile disappears. “Damn. Pounders,” he curses. He hesitates for a moment, and then makes a split-second decision, shoving the radio at Ben: “Here. You’re faster. You take it!”

“What? Am not!” Ben protests, but it’s too late — Hux takes off down the street. Dumbly, Ben stands frozen for a moment, instinctively clutching his new burden.

“You must stop them!” the woman is telling the officers. Ben is shaken into action: he hefts up the radio, wheels round, and pounds down the pavement after Hux. “They stole my radio!”

The noise of the Gestapo men’s shrill whistles cuts harshly through the air as they race down the street in hot pursuit. The bakery shopgirl cries again, to anyone who’ll listen, “They stole my radio!” The crowds on the street part for the policemen, looking after them in mild interest before returning to their errands.

“Stop! Stop!” The cops are fast, but Hux and Ben are faster, quite literally tearing through the market: Ben detours off the pavement and knocks down a whole stall, fruits, vegetables, and the support poles of the stand clattering noisily to the ground, its proprietor tumbling down after them with an outraged cry.

They race through the rest of the market, pushing people out of their way, taking twists and turns and never losing momentum as they run. Hux pauses to push over a stack of wicker baskets and the tarpaulins that cover them, obstructing the officers’ path. The tarps are wet, puddled with water from last night’s rain, and the men slip on them like something out of a Chaplin film, sliding uselessly to the ground with frustrated exclamations. By the time they’ve hauled themselves up again, Ben and Hux are almost a block away.

They pelt down a side-street, the walls of the surrounding buildings adorned brightly with Nazi propaganda posters, and then dash around a corner, their feet splashing through the muddy water on the ground. Ben is panting hard under the weight of his cargo, lagging behind Hux, who races on ahead. The officers are almost upon them when an open-backed army truck turns into the street.

Hux spots it and puts on a vicious burst of speed. He grabs the wooden back of the truck and hauls himself up, clambers into the empty bed; “C’mon, Ben!” he shouts, reaching out a hand to his friend, whose strides are slowing now, desperation writ large on his face. “Give me your hand!”

Ben grits his teeth and reaches out his free hand, but the distance between them is too great. “They’re right behind us, come on!” Hux entreats him fervently.

“I can’t!” Ben shouts. His hand grasps at the empty air as he runs, trying in vain to catch up with the truck even as the officers gain on him.

_“Ben!_ Drop the radio! Drop it! Drop the damn thing!” Hux cries.

_“No!_ C’mon!” Ben yells back, his face contorted. He reaches again for Hux’s hand and misses.

“Leave the radio!”

_“No!”_

But even as he protests, Ben knows he’s done for: the officers are practically on him. With a look of martyred fury, he flings the radio to the ground, and himself with it. The wooden casing splinters into a hundred jagged pieces, just as Dietrich’s record had earlier today. Hux cries out as Ben hits the ground: _“Damn!”_

At once the officers are upon him, grabbing him by the arms and hauling him to his feet. Ben is breathing hard, his mouth set grimly.

_“Ben!”_ Hux calls after him as the truck speeds up, getting further and further away. The pedestrians in the street watch the scene with unrestrained fascination, and Hux, too, can only watch helplessly as the officers pin Ben’s arms between theirs. Ben casts a last, sorry glance over his shoulder at Hux as the officers drag him away.

*

The Gestapo don’t take Ben down to the police precinct, but rather to the imposing old government building which has been repurposed into the headquarters of the local _Schutzstaffel:_ the SS, the Nazi party’s vicious paramilitary wing. A blood-red swastika flag hangs proudly over its Baroque façade, reminding the city exactly whose justice is dispensed within.

After he’s spent what must have been some hours alone, in a cold, damp, mouldy-smelling “holding cell” — a meeting-room that has been cleared-out and partitioned into several tiny cells — a sneering, baby-faced officer comes to fetch him. “Someone’s called for you,” he informs him with distaste. “One of your thieving traitor friends, no doubt.”

Ben stands, keeping his silence even when the officer hisses a foul name at him under his breath, and allows himself to be led out of the makeshift cell. He’s un-cuffed, and rubs his wrists absently as he waits, uncertain, in the foyer for his fate to be determined. He wonders who called for him: Hux, he imagines, who’d most likely hightailed it home after Ben was taken away.

“Outside,” the same officer tells him, returning to the foyer from the side-chamber into which he’d disappeared to authorise the paperwork releasing him. (Ben realises, with a sudden, dark urge to laugh, that he now has a criminal record — and for the last reason he’d ever expected.) “Go on! Out with you.”

The officer chivvies him along into the night air: it’s grown dark since their escapades at the market, and chilly. Ben shivers, but he hardly has time to be cold before the officer is shoving him down the steps, in the direction of the long black car idling in the street below.  “Get in.” The man punctuates his words with a push to Ben’s back, forcing him into the backseat.

Ben swallows hard, still anxious although his ordeal is apparently over. If he’d been brought in by the regular city police, he’d feel better about the whole situation; but their jobs were taken over by the Gestapo sometime even before Ben’s father died, and nothing has been quite the same ever since.

The car starts up and pulls away from the kerb. The baby-faced officer shoots a last hard glare at Ben as they drive away.

“Hello, Benjamin.”

Ben gives a start. He’d been staring out the window and hadn’t realised that he wasn’t alone in the car. He whips his head to the source of the voice — and is both dismayed and strangely pleased to see the familiar scarred face of Herr Schramm.

“Where are you taking me?” Ben asks at once. He has the smallest hope that maybe the odds have just swung in his favour.

“Home,” Herr Schramm answers him, with a tight-lipped, reptilian smile. Ben lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding; but he doesn’t feel completely safe, not yet. He still doesn’t trust this man.

“Does my mother know?” he asks, not looking at Schramm.

“I should think so,” Schramm answers, his tone condescending. “She’s the one who called me.”

Ben’s stomach tightens. _Hux must have gone to her._ He had hoped to keep the afternoon’s incident just between the two of them, if at all possible; but of course, it wouldn’t have been easy. It only makes sense that Hux had gone to Lea, too: his own father would have hit him for sure if he’d begged his help in collecting Ben from the Gestapo. Ben can hardly fault him for making the logical choice.

“Lucky for you that she did, too,” Schramm adds. “Otherwise you could be on your way to a juvenile home or worse by now.”

His voice is still, ostensibly, neutral, but Ben detects the slightest hint of a threat lurking just below the cool veneer: _You’d be in very hot water if it wasn’t for me, boy, and you’d do best to remember that._ He swallows.

“I don’t care,” Ben retorts, but his voice catches in his throat.

Schramm hears, and gives him a dark look. “Well,” he replies, and his voice has hardened now, “however small your concern may be for your own well-being, you might want to consider that there are others who might be endangered by your…recklessness.”

The buried threat floats, sinister, to the surface. The way Schramm says it makes it sound like he knows more than he’s letting on — knows more about Ben’s _recklessness_ than this afternoon’s police chase.

Ben bites his lip, hard, to keep from making another foolish statement of defiance and tightening further the noose around his neck. He turns his head away and stares pointedly out at the nighttime city passing by.

There’s a shuffling noise beside him, and Schramm clears his throat slightly. Ben turns back to him to find he’s being offered a cigarette.

Ben glances at the pack and then up at Schramm, not fooled. “What do I have to do?” he asks.

Schramm looks pleased at the question, at Ben’s catching on so quickly. “Only the same as most boys your age are doing,” he tells him almost pleasantly, putting away the pack of cigarettes without removing one for himself. “I’ve informed the local HJ commander of the situation.”

Ben reacts at once. “I’m _not_ joining the HJ.”

Schramm raises his pale brows, his gnarled scar wrinkling between them. “Of course, it’s your decision,” he replies. Ben clenches his fists in his lap and hates him, hates him, hates him. “I’m just trying to help,” Schramm adds.

“I don’t want your help,” Ben says. He glares at Schramm for a moment before turning his eyes away, unable to keep looking at him. He has the cruel thought that _whatever accident gave him that scar, I wish it’d killed him instead._

“You know, Benjamin,” Schramm says after a moment of tense, icy silence, “you may not believe this, but I was once very much like you.”

Ben recoils internally. How could _he_ ever be compared to this horrible man, this Nazi _creature?_

“I know how confusing things can seem when a young boy loses his father,” Schramm continues.

Ben turns his head to him at once, startled. _How does he know about my father?_ he wonders, at first; but then Schramm is a Nazi, and Ben’s father was imprisoned as a traitor. _Of course he would know._

“Mine died when I was only nine,” Schramm tells him. “In the war.” He shakes his head, putting on a sympathetic air that Ben sees through right away. “I couldn’t understand it. I blamed myself,” he says. “Dropped out of school, left home. Drifted from one job to the next.” He pauses, apparently for effect: Ben’s hatred grows hotter. “And then one day,” Schramm says, “I heard a man speak in Munich.”

This is the first time Ben has heard any genuine emotion in Schramm’s voice. It unsettles him more than he can say.

A little smile plays on Schramm’s thin lips, and he looks distantly ahead of him, as if staring into the past. “I felt somehow he was speaking directly to me. Somehow, he understood the helplessness I felt,” he continues. “That day, I learned I was not alone.” His cold blue eyes fix on Ben’s, and there is real passion there. “While I’d been helpless to save my father, there was still something I could do to help save something much greater: the Fatherland.”

His voice has lowered almost to a whisper, and the strange light in his eyes would have been comical were it not so terrifying. Had Ben had doubts about his mistrust of Schramm before, these doubts now evaporate at once, hearing him speak with such reverence about Adolf Hitler and his party’s goals. He stares at Schramm and says nothing.

Schramm holds his gaze for a moment, and then, quietly, almost gently, says, “You don’t have to be alone, Benjamin.”

Ben looks away.

The car pulls up at Ben’s apartment building, and he gets out of it quickly, relieved: the ride, although only from downtown, had felt interminable. He slams the door behind him. The car waits, engine running, as Ben climbs the stairs; once he’s reached the landing and headed for the front door, it drives away.

Ben swears he can feel Schramm’s cold eyes boring into his back until the car has turned the corner, leaving the dark street quiet once again.

*

Ben knocks three times on the door of his flat, trying to be as quiet as he can: it’s late, and Rey and the neighbours are no doubt asleep. His house-key is absent from his pocket; most likely it fell out at the market during their wild race to freedom.

His mother opens the door almost at once. She doesn’t reach for him, nor exclaim, in relief or in scolding; instead, she merely stands there, half-hidden by the door, and waits as Ben comes inside. He feels shame wash over him: there are tear-tracks shining on her cheeks.

Lea locks the door again. She takes a deep breath, not looking at him, and then finally she asks, her voice strained, “Are you all right?”

Ben bows his head. He fumbles for words, his throat suddenly tight. “I’m sorry, Mama,” he forces out, realising only now what a nightmare this evening must have been for her. _She has been through this before, remember: first her husband, now her son…_

He glances at her, and their eyes meet for a long, wretched moment; and then Lea, her face crumpling, reaches for him, throwing her arms around his neck and standing on tip-toe to hug him close. Ben wraps his arms around his mother’s waist as she lets out a sob into his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

They go into the kitchen, keeping quiet — Lea hasn’t woken Rey, not wanting to worry her.

“Mama,” Ben asks softly, as Lea bustles about, finishing up the supper dishes she’d abandoned while waiting for Ben to come home, “will you give me a haircut?”

Lea turns to him, frowning. “What on Earth for?”

Ben sighs. “It’s a long story. But please — will you?”

Lea regards him curiously for a moment. She reaches to drain the sink, and as the water gurgles away, she nods. “All right,” she acquiesces. “But tell me what happened today.”

“Didn’t Hux tell you?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

She goes to fetch the hair-things.

And so Ben puts a towel round his shoulders and leans back into the basin of warm water, and fills his mother in on the day’s events as she methodically trims his long dark hair. He has been growing it out for several years now — since shortly after his father died — and he’s sad to see it go; but he knows it’s what he must do.

In explaining, Ben skims over Hux’s cruel behaviour at Dietrich’s, and takes full blame for stealing the radio, even though technically Hux was the one to take it from the bakery counter. “It was just meant to be a joke,” he explains. “Because it was Herr Hentz who took it in the first place. We didn’t mean to scare the shopgirl so badly.”

“And I’m sure you didn’t mean to get caught, either,” Lea says, sighing. She wipes off her scissors and hands Ben a towel. “You’re just like your father and Lukas were at your age,” she comments; Ben brightens a little. “I don’t mean that as a compliment,” Lea hurries to add, but there is a little, weary smile playing on her lips. She sighs again, and the smile fades. “What happened when they caught up with you? They took you to the SS?”

“Yes,” Ben says, running a hand over his new, much shorter hair with a grimace, “and they kept me there for ages — I suppose that’s when Hux came here. And then once you’d called they let me out.”

“How did you get home?”

This is the part Ben’s been dreading. Worse than confessing the foolish chain of events that got him into trouble this afternoon is the thought of telling her what Schramm has heavily implied he should do, revealing the reason for the haircut. Ben bites his lip and averts his eyes from his mother’s curious gaze.

“Ben?” she asks.

Ben sighs. “They sent a car. Herr Schramm was there.”

_“Herr Schramm?”_

Ben can tell by the fear immediately present in his mother’s voice that she, too, had hoped never to see him again. He nods. “Yes. And he…” He pauses, reluctant to speak, but eventually expels, “He…strongly counselled me to join the HJ. He mentioned juvenile homes _,_ and reminded me that I’m not the only person I’m hurting with my _recklessness.”_ He swallows, still seeing the ominous, knowing look in Schramm’s eyes.

“No,” Lea says at once. “I won’t have it. I couldn’t bear to see you in that uniform.”

Ben feels relief. Part of him had feared that his mother would agree with Schramm, and then he would have had no choice. “Thank you, Mama,” he says. He shakes his head. “They’re pigs.”

“Well, that explains the haircut,” Lea says. She gives a half-hearted smile. “You had me worried. I should’ve known that nothing but the threat of a _juvenile home_ would convince you to part with that hair.” She drops a kiss on his head, stows her scissors and basin back under the sink. And then she pauses, and turns back to Ben, and suddenly her face is grave.

“But Ben…” she begins. She sighs, a towel still clutched in her hand. “Be careful,” Lea says finally. “We don’t want them to start watching our house again. Do you remember what it was like, all of us jumping at every knock?” She starts gathering up the sheet she’d laid out on the floor to collect the fallen hair. “I’d rather die than go through that again,” she murmurs, almost to herself.

Ben reaches down to lay a hand on her shoulder, and squeezes.

Lea pauses, and Ben feels her exhale a long breath; and then she hurries to stand and dispose of the mess. “Go to bed now, Ben,” she calls to him. “It’s late.”

Ben stares after her for a moment. He runs his hand over his newly-shorn hair again, wincing at how it exposes his too-large ears, and he knows, _I would rather die than put her through that again._

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My [main blog](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and my [Star Wars blog](http://huxes.tumblr.com). :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Nazi propaganda/anti-Semitism.

*

One night later that week, Ben is in his room, studying — or he _had_ been studying, at least. Now the novel on which he’s writing an essay tomorrow lies face-down on the table, abandoned out of sheer boredom. His page of notes has been growing slowly more covered in doodles; he hums a swing tune absently under his breath, drawing languid circles and pictures in the margins, daydreaming about dancing and summer and Hux. He looks up at the ceiling, at the light rain falling outside the dirty window, and listens to the distant sounds of cars and people in the street, and the nearer ones of his mother and Rey preparing supper in the kitchen. Rey’s high piping voice floats above Lea’s calm throaty one, dishes and utensils clattering all the while.

Reluctantly, after a few moments Ben picks up the book again and goes back to the page he was on, searching for the quote that he wrote down halfway before putting his pencil down and giving up. He picks it up again now, and fills in the rest of the phrase without absorbing it at all. He flicks to the next dog-eared page and searches for the underlined sentences there, transcribing those too, knowing he won’t remember them anyway.

A break in the hum of noise from the kitchen brings him out of his drudging daze. He hears what sounds like a knock at the door, and then the sound of a pot being set down in a hurry. Ben sits up in his chair, one ear cocked to the bedroom door, worried now —  _what if it’s Hentz again, or worse, Herr Schramm? —_ but after a moment he hears his mother exclaim, sounding concerned: “Well, hello, Brandeis, what brings you here so late?”

Ben is out of his chair in a second. He hurries down the hall as his mother tells Hux, “Ben is in his room, I’ll call him,” and just as she comes to do so, he rushes past her to the front door. “Oh!” Lea says, as her son nearly bowls her over in his haste. “Well, here he is now.”

“Hux!” Ben says, heart rate spiking just at the sight of him. He beams, and makes to embrace him, but he stops when he sees Hux’s face. He stands on the threshold looking chilled, his face and hair misted with raindrops; his scarf is tied haphazardly, his wool coat only partly buttoned-up. His chest is rising and falling quickly, and he curls and uncurls his fingers as if to un-cramp or un-freeze them: he must have ridden over on his bike in a hurry. “What is it?” Ben asks him, brow creasing.

“Can we talk — alone?” Hux asks shortly, casting a glance behind Ben to Rey, who’s come peeking out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon held tight in her hand. Her eyes wide, she gives Hux a little wave before Lea scolds her and shepherds her back into the kitchen. She follows, and shoots Ben a look of worry as she goes: _What’s happened?_ Ben can only shrug.

He turns back to Hux and nods: “Of course.” He leads him down the hall to his and Rey’s bedroom, closing the door firmly behind them. Ben clears a discarded sweater, his knapsack, and an assortment of papers off his bed, and indicates that Hux sit there, taking a seat on his desk chair himself.

“What is it? Did something happen at home?” Ben asks, growing genuinely worried now. There have been other times when Hux has come here for refuge, after a scene between his parents or an argument with his father, but not for many years now. (Whether that is because things have improved at home, or because Hux no longer wants to impose on the Solbergs, is not for Ben to say.)

Hux nods, tight-lipped. He stares at the ground and doesn’t unwind his scarf or take off his coat, instead sitting rigid on the bed, his bearing stiff and nearly military _._ In his lap, though, his hands move, fingers picking thoughtlessly and punishingly at the skin around his nails.

“My father,” Hux says. “We had a — discussion.” His jaw muscles clench. “He said that I was useless. Weak and useless.” He raises his head, and his eyes are hard. “This isn’t a new sentiment of his, of course,” he continues, his voice almost shaking with tightly controlled anger. “He reminds me of it almost constantly. But tonight,” he says, “he decided he could do something about it. _To make me worthy of the name I bear,_ were his exact words, I believe,” Hux quotes with real anger. “ _His_ name, that is. I’m not a good enough son for him, and he has had enough.”

He goes silent, biting down hard on his bottom lip. He stares straight ahead, his fingers still moving with a fury and his eyes fixed fiercely on the wall; in the dim lamplight Ben can see them glimmering with unshed tears.

“What does that mean?” Ben asks him, afraid of what he might hear. “What will he do?”

“I’m to join the HJ,” Hux announces, toneless. “At once. He’s grown tired, it would seem, of my ‘lollygagging about with cripples, girls, and sons of traitors, dancing to American filth,’” he adds, repeating verbatim and with venom the awful things his father had said. Ben winces.

“Now I’ll be a better son to him _and_ to the Reich. Doing my duty for the Fatherland and the future, helping Germany regain her rightful place in history, and all that,” Hux concludes, his full lips twisted in an ugly sneer. “Disgusting, all of it.”

“I’ll join with you,” Ben says.

He’d made up his mind as soon as Hux said it. Since his encounter with Schramm last week (and his haircut, for which Hux teased him mercilessly at school the next day), he has gained no desire to become one of the goose-stepping, motto-spouting, khaki-clad HJ boys who push swing kids and younger boys into lockers at school — but he isn’t about to let Hux go alone. “If you have to join, then I’m coming with you,” he declares, coming to sit next to Hux on the bed and putting one hand on his shoulder.

“No.” Hux refutes him at once. “Ben, you can’t. This is my cross to bear,” he says, wry even through his anger. “It’ll be awful. Don’t join until you have no choice.”

“I don’t,” Ben says simply. “If you go, I go too.” He meets Hux’s eye and holds his gaze.

“I won’t let you,” Hux tells him, his voice less harsh now. “Come on, Ben, don’t be absurd — you’ll hate it. _I’ll_ hate it. Who’ll dance with Karo if we’re both at parades?” he persists, half-joking but stern, when Ben doesn’t budge.

“She’ll find someone,” Ben murmurs. He moves his hand from Hux’s shoulder to his face and kisses him gently on the lips. “You know she will.”

Hux shakes his head. “Still. Don’t join too.”

A knock on the door startles them. They break apart quickly, moving several inches away from each other on the bed; Hux swipes at his eyes, touches his lips. Ben folds his hands in his lap and looks up expectantly when his mother opens the door a crack, her eyes worried: “Would you like to stay for supper, Brandeis?” Lea asks.

Hux gives her his trademark smooth, mature smile, looking every inch the Berlin businessman or savvy general. “No, thank you, Frau Solberg,” he replies, cool and composed. “I just had to ask Ben a question about tomorrow’s essay, and I should be getting home. I’m sorry to have disturbed your evening.” He rises, straightening his coat and scarf.

“You’ve not disturbed us at all,” Lea assures him, smiling too, but there is still concern in her eyes. “Ben can walk you out — supper’s on the table,” she tells her son. _“Guten Abend,_ Brandeis. Good luck on your essay.”

“Thank you, Frau Solberg.”

At the front door Ben lays a hand on Hux’s arm and says, low, “If anything else happens, with your father, you can come here, you know that —”

“I know, Ben,” Hux cuts him off. He smiles that same efficient charming smile, but Ben sees his eyes are tired, shadowed with the memory of tears. “Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He presses Ben’s hand for the barest moment, and then he is gone, the door closing behind him. Ben hears his footsteps moving briskly down the hall.

Ben leans against the doorframe for a moment, heaving a sigh. What will this mean for Hux, for their friends — for them? He is still determined to join the HJ along with Hux, despite his protests; he can see no way around it. _And no matter how much I might hate it, at least I will be there with him. It’s too much time to be apart._

At supper he tells his mother and Rey Hux’s news, omitting his father’s harsh words.

“He’s going to join the HJ,” Ben says, as casually as he can, “and I think I’m going to join now, too.”

Lea’s reaction is immediate. Her forehead creases: “No, Ben, don’t. Please. You know how I feel about this; if you don’t _have_ to, you shouldn’t…”

“I don’t want you to be like them,” Rey interjects plaintively. “They’re _mean.”_

Ben smiles half-heartedly at his cousin and his mother. “I won’t be mean,” he promises. “I just don’t want Hux to be alone. It’ll be fine,” he assures them.

“Hux can take care of himself,” Lea disagrees, frowning. She shakes her head. “I don’t like it, Ben. I’d rather you stayed out of the HJ entirely.”

“They’re going to come for me eventually,” Ben argues. “Schramm made that very clear. So why not just sign up on my own? I don’t see the problem.”

Lea’s frown deepens. Rey looks back and forth between them, confused: Ben had told her a much-abridged story of his adventures with the radio, leaving out the car ride with Herr Schramm and making excuses for his new haircut. Lea pauses for a moment, thinking, and Ben senses that there’s much she isn’t saying when, finally, she comes out with, “I won’t allow it.”

“But Mama —”

Lea’s words ring out sharp, cutting him off. “ _No,_ Benjamin. I am your mother and you will obey me.”

There is silence. Ben looks at his mother, befuddled: they don’t disagree on much these days, and when they do, Ben knows that Lea has good reasons. What he _doesn’t_ know — yet, anyway — is what those reasons are.

“You won’t be joining with Hux,” Lea repeats, when Ben is silent.

“Mama, please,” Ben insists, his tone growing heated now. “Please, just let me. Schramm has already _threatened_ me, for God’s sake — wouldn’t it be better for me to join of my own accord, rather than waiting until they have to chase me down and force me? It’ll look better, it’ll _seem_ better; they’ll know I listened to him, they’ll stay away from us —”

“Who are _they?”_ Rey interjects, her eyes wide with fright. “Are people coming after us? Did we do something bad?”

“Quiet, Rey,” Lea hushes her niece. “It’s nothing. Clear up the dishes, please, and then go to your room.”

Rey rises, tremulous, and goes about doing this. Lea and Ben stare at each other in silence, waiting for her to leave. Ben is thinking furiously, wanting desperately to know why his mother is so averse to this, to making this choice that will keep them safe: Ben himself, and his mother and Rey, and _Hux;_ keep all of them safe and free of suspicion…

Rey finishes clearing the dishes, stacking them noisily in the sink. Lea beckons her over, and still wide-eyed, uncharacteristically silent, she comes; they each kiss her goodnight and then Lea sends her off to bed. Once they hear the bedroom door close behind her, Lea leans forward, seeming to have reached a decision.

“Your father,” she tells Ben, her voice low, “hated the Nazis. Your uncle, too. When they returned from the war, things had changed: the Germany they came home to in 1918 was not the Germany they had left four years before. They watched the young men of their generation grow hard, grow angry, and turn to hatred. They watched those young men form political parties _based_ on that anger and hatred, and they watched those parties grow stronger and stronger.

“The pressure mounted. It became almost impossible to resist the pull of the Nationalsozialistches and the other parties built on hate. Your father and my brother belonged to the Sozialdemokrats, and they watched as that party’s numbers dwindled as more and more of its members went over to the Nazis, because that was the safe and easy thing to do.” Lea scoffs: “The _cowardly_ thing.”

She heaves a deep sigh. “Hans and Lukas watched those party members who remained disappear in the middle of the night. And instead of succumbing to the tide or ignoring what was going on — instead of keeping their heads down, to keep themselves and their families safe — to keep _us_ safe — they fought.”

Lea’s voice trembles, now. Ben sees tears glittering in the corners of her eyes; she raises a hand to swipe them away. She takes a deep breath and carries on.

“They were part of a small but dedicated anti-Nazi resistance group. They had contacts within the party, and they were among a brave few who were plotting, in the summer of 1933 — after the Sozialdemokrats were outlawed for having voted against the Nazis — to assassinate Hitler himself. They could already see what a danger he was, and that no matter how bad things were now, the worst was yet to come.”

Lea falls silent for a moment, meeting Ben’s eyes. He sits, stunned, hardly able to comprehend.

“What happened?” he asks quietly.

“They were found out,” Lea says tonelessly. “One of their friends betrayed them. Leonaldo Christoffersen — your father’s best friend, Ben. He was a double agent for the Nazis, and he informed them of the plot.” Her eyes darken at the mention of Lando’s name. “I have never forgiven him. I never will.”

Ben feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Leonaldo —  _Onkel Lando,_ he called him, his father’s tall dark laughing friend, fond of fine clothing and good wine, a master of card tricks and sleight-of-hand, dazzling the younger Ben with his flair and ready smile. He had been a great friend of both of Ben’s parents, and his uncle too, _before;_ but since his father’s and uncle’s deaths Lea has cut off contact with him, and now Ben knows why. He thinks of the man he’d once admired and now feels only cold.

When Lea speaks again she is quiet. She presses a hand to her forehead. “When Lando revealed the Demokrats’ plan, everyone involved was arrested at once. They took them away. You remember.”

Ben nods. “How could I ever forget?” he says hoarsely.

The tears spill from Lea’s eyes, now. Ben reaches across the table and takes both her hands in his. “They killed them,” Leia whispers. “They put them in prison, and when they came back they were ill, and then they died. The Nazis killed your father, and they killed my only brother, Ben, the only family I had left. They tore our family apart.” Her words are cut off in a sob, but she struggles bravely on, her eyes fixed with a desperate intensity on Ben’s. “And that is why I won’t allow you to wear their uniform. I won’t let you become one of them.”

Ben rises from his seat. He comes over to his mother’s chair, and he kneels to be at her height, and he takes her in his arms and holds her tight. Lea collapses into him and lets herself cry.

“Mama,” Ben whispers, when her tears have at last been exhausted. “Mama, I’ll never be one of them. You know that.”

“But Ben, why even _join?”_ Lea protests passionately. “Schramm has not forced you, it was not an order or an outright threat — you don’t need to listen to him. And Hux — Hux can take care of himself.”

“Mama,” Ben says steadily. “It’s because of Hux that I have to go,” he tells her, knowing that this is what he must do. “Lukas. Your brother followed my father to the war, didn’t he? Lukas joined up because Hans did. Right?”

Lea nods, once.

“And when they came back, he followed him into politics. You told me so.I’d bet he joined the — the resistance because my father did, too.” Ben takes a deep breath. “And it’s like that. For me — me and Hux. Wherever he goes, I’ll go too. It’s as simple as that,” he says, although it is not, of course it is not; but he cannot tell his mother how things between them really are. He will not put her in any more danger. “I have to go with him. I’d follow him anywhere.”

Lea looks at him for a long, long moment. Ben gets the sense, much like with Schramm, that her eyes are seeing the very deepest parts of him, the inside of his soul; but unlike with Schramm, he feels that she understands. That she _knows_ him, or more of him, and loves him anyway. He feels his throat growing tight.

“Oh, Ben,” Lea whispers finally. “You don’t know what might happen, what they might make you do — who they might turn you into.” Her eyes beseech him. “What if you’re following him into ruin?”

Ben swallows.

“I don’t care.”

*

On Friday morning at school, Ben waits in a doorway between classes and watches for Hux. When he spies him coming down the hall, grim-faced in his new uniform, Ben hisses, “Hey, swing boy!”

Hux wheels to the sound of his voice, his face hardening at once, ready for a fight. His features relax when he sees that it’s only Ben — but then his expression changes to one of incredulity.

“Ben?” Hux asks, a strange surprised grin breaking across his face.

Ben grins back, stepping into the hallway. He runs a hand over his too-short hair, gelled close and dark to his scalp, and then jams his hands into his pockets — the pockets of his own brand-spanking-new, khaki Hitlerjugend uniform. “Like it?” he winks.

“What are you _doing_ with that?” Hux demands.

“What, did you think I was gonna let you have all this fun by yourself?” Ben teases.

Hux shakes his head rapidly. “This is not going to be fun. You shouldn’t have done this,” he reprimands him, but he can’t hide the bemused relief in his voice.

“Well,” Ben says earnestly, “you’d have done the same thing. We can’t let them split us apart.” He meets Hux’s eyes for a moment, and Hux flushes, smiling a little before he looks away, acutely conscious of the growing crowd of people in the hall. “Anyway, think about it,” Ben adds, lowering his voice a little: “It’s the perfect cover.”

“A cover,” Hux repeats, raising his eyebrows. Ben nods. He doesn’t just mean for the dancing, and they both know it. “Well, you’re right on that front,” Hux concedes, and he gives a short laugh: “HJ by day, swing kids by night…”

He trails off, surveying Ben’s new haircut, the black neckerchief knotted tight at his throat, the red armband and the khaki knee-shorts, and he gives a scoff. “You look _ridiculous,”_   he needles him, giving his shoulder an affectionate shove and pinching an earlobe between his fingers. Ben nods his agreement, smiling widely.

The bell rings. Hux shakes his head again, a real grin tugging at his lips, and slings an arm around Ben’s shoulders: “C’mon.” Ben wraps an arm around his waist and pats his back, and they head off to class, identical in their uniforms, blending in with everyone else.

_We’re safe, now._

It had taken another talk with Lea, another solemn vow that the only reason he was joining the HJ was Hux — “And Schramm,” Ben had reminded his mother gently. “I think I should listen to him _,_ just in case.”  

Lea hadn’t liked it, but finally she’d given in, and allowed Ben to go down to the local headquarters and enlist in the HJ. They’d fitted him for a uniform and he’d brought it home to show her; she’d frowned down at it, tight-lipped, as if it were some rotting carcass spread out on the bedspread instead of harmless cloth and leather. She’d had to affix the black-spider swastika to the crimson armband herself: Ben knew that was the worst part. He watched her do it, her mouth set in that same hard line, jabbing the needle through the thick cloth as if hoping to draw blood.

“Thank you,” he’d said softly, when she finished. He kissed the top of her head and hoped she knew he was sorry. “This will keep us safe, Mama. They can’t hurt us now.”

Lea had only sighed. They both knew — they both _know —_ that not even that red armband can keep them safe forever.

*

The weekly HJ meetings are deadly dull, just as they’d known they would be.

They watch propaganda films for hours on end, dry boastful things: _“The German people once again rest easy, knowing there is nothing to fear from within,”_ one of them assures the bored crowd of fresh recruits. _“But let them not rest_ too _easy,”_ it continues, warning: _“Like a plague, the Jewish infestation stays ready to strike a death blow to the heart of Germany’s resurgence.”_ The film drones on, over a scene of rats scurrying from a sewer-grate interspersed with images of Jewish men at study and prayer.

The room at the community hall where the meetings are held is filled with blank-faced, glazed-eyed boys, staring dumbly at the flickering black-and-white screen as the film proclaims angrily, _“The Jew cares nothing for Germany! From early childhood, its young are taught to follow the lead of the Jewish elders, whose stranglehold on the world’s economy Germany has only now started to break.”_

At Hux’s side near the back of the room, Ben is fidgeting, leaning his head on his hands and fighting not to laugh. Hux keeps his eyes fixed diligently on the film, but Ben can see that he’s struggling too, torn between his need to stay out of trouble lest it get back to his father, and his genuine amused disbelief at the things they’re being taught. Ben looks at him: Hux turns his head just slightly, meeting his eye, and Ben pulls a stern, imposing face, imitating the expression of the model German general currently on-screen.

“I have a good German stick up my arse,” Ben whispers to Hux in a heavy Bavarian accent, mimicking the general. “The Jews will never find it there.”

Hux’s lips quirk as he fights back a laugh. Ben leans closer: “The glory of the Reich is secure,” he mouths, sitting up very straight and adopting a constipated expression. The film begins to play _Deutschland über alles,_ trumpets blaring proudly — Ben frowns, looking pained, as he hums along as if commanded to do so, shifting in his seat. Hux stifles a snicker in his hand, and quickly stops laughing when the HJ’s adult leader, the Bahnführer, shoots them a warning glare. He jabs a finger at the film.

Ben slouches in his seat and mouths _Sorry_ at the Bahnführer, who looks distinctly unimpressed. Before turning back to the movie, Ben gives Hux a wink, and gets an eye-roll and a sidelong smirk in return.

 _“Long live the Führer!”_ the film proclaims in triumph. _“Long live the German Reich!”_

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again: all the Nazi stuff, with the exception of Ben's joke at the end, comes directly from the film, and, including Ben's joke, in no way represents my own opinions. Also, although several [assassination attempts on Hitler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler) _did_ take place, the one mentioned here, in the summer of 1933, is not based on real events.
> 
> I've already added a link in an earlier chapter, but for those of you who've been reading from the beginning, I'll take this opportunity to point out that [Alexa](http://pembroke.tumblr.com/) has done some [adorable art](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/158854239016/pembroke-a-commission-i-did-for-huxes-from) for this fic!! Go check out my boys and give them some love. Thanks again, Alexa. :')
> 
> As usual, I'm on Tumblr [here](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com/). Maybe consider reblogging the [link](http://huxes.tumblr.com/) to this week's chapter and spreading the word.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for graphic violence, offensive language, and descriptions of injuries. Read safely, please.

*

They first know something is amiss when Dietrich doesn’t come to school the next Tuesday.

He never misses class for any reason — Ben has seen him sitting in maths with a face bright-red with fever, giving a spoken presentation with a throat so hoarse and scratchy it made their teacher wince to hear it, even dragging himself bravely through physical education on days when his spine was so stiff he could hardly stand. He is a dedicated scholar, more so even than Hux; the two of them are tied for top grades in their year, but while Hux’s attendance record is not without a spot, Dietrich’s has been perfect since their first year of secondary school.

Until today.

Ben exchanges a frown with Hux, glancing at the empty seat next to Karo that is usually filled by Dietrich. “Have you seen him today?” Karo whispers to them, as the rest of their class files in and the teacher begins writing the lesson on the board. The boys both shake their heads. Karo bites her lip. “Me neither. Something’s wrong.”

At lunchtime, the three of them leave the school grounds and walk the short while to the Meissners’ house. Hux knocks on the door and they all call his name, but no one comes to the door. “His father will be at work, and his sister at school,” Karo thinks aloud. “But his mother should be home. Where is she? Where _are_ they?”

Defeated, they return to school. They grow increasingly concerned when Dietrich is absent from their afternoon classes as well, eliminating the possibility that he could have been out this morning for a doctor’s appointment or something else excusable. With every passing hour, the divot between Karo’s brows deepens further: Dietrich is like a brother to her. She’s doted on and looked out for him for years, ever since she punched a boy who was calling him names in the kindergarten schoolyard.

(That boy, incidentally, was Hux; and after a brief fistfight with Karoline, which she won, he apologised to Dietrich and was immediately forgiven. The unlikely three became fast friends, and when Ben joined their class the next year and took a liking to Hux, he was accepted into the fold without question. They’ve been thick as thieves ever since — and Karo could still beat Hux up, if ever she so desired.)

After school a dilemma arises. There’s a party at the Bismarck tonight, and they’d arranged to go to Dietrich’s after school, to study and play records and eat supper before going; but now Dietrich isn’t here. “Why don’t we go over there anyway?” Ben suggests, after a few moments of deliberation between the three of them. “I’m sure he’ll be home by now. Come on.”

For the second time that day Hux knocks on the Meissners’ door. They linger on the doorstep in anxious silence, the late-February wind tugging at their hair; they wait a moment, and a moment more, and no one comes. Ben is about to turn away, and Hux and Karo to follow, when suddenly the door opens.

It’s not Dietrich, or his mother or father, or even his little sister. It’s a girl they know from school — the Meissners’ neighbour, the girl Dietrich fancies in his quiet shy way — and she looks distraught. Her arms are full of books and clothes (Ben spies the red _Hepster’s Dictionary),_ and there are tear-tracks on her face. She gives a little gasp when she sees them.

“Helga,” Ben exclaims. “What are you doing here? What’s going on? Where’s Dietrich?”

Helga opens her mouth to speak, and only a sob comes out. Karo steps past Ben and pulls the girl into an embrace, rubbing her back to soothe her; and then Helga raises her reddened face and says, “He’s at the hospital.”

It’s too far of a walk. They find the Meissners’ bicycles in the front yard: there are four in the family, and four of them here now. Helga piles Dietrich’s things into the basket of her bike — “I’ve been to see him already; he asked for these,” she explains, her voice watery — and they take off to the hospital as fast as they can go.

Helga leads the way to his room. Ben and Hux burst through the door ahead of her, anxious, afraid — and then stop short when they catch a glimpse of their friend lying prone, eyes closed, on the bed.

His face is scraped and scratched in places, the cuts a sinister red against the pallor of his skin. There’s a bandage on his right cheekbone, just below his eye. His arms are folded across his pyjama-clad chest; the left one, his dominant hand, is encased in a layered gauze bandage. Only his thumb and index and middle fingers are free. Even in sleep, his brows are furrowed nervously. He looks terribly young without his spectacles.

“Jesus,” Hux breathes, breaking the stunned silence. His brows draw down over his eyes in anger. “Who the hell did this to him?”

“We don’t know,” Helga whispers timorously. Her eyes are red from crying. “He was only awake for a little while when I saw him before — and he was so upset, he was crying, we couldn’t make out what he said. He was in so much pain. The doctors gave him medicine to put him back to sleep.”

“Jesus,” Hux repeats. His fists clench at his sides.

They stand there in silence, the four of them, in a fretful circle around his bed. At some point, though, although they have said nothing, he must become aware of their presence through his slumber — for Dietrich’s eyes slowly open.

When he takes in the sight before him, Dietrich gives a cry of terror.

He jerks upright in bed and raises his arms before his face as if to shield it, his eyes wide with horror. “No! No!” Dietrich shouts, seized with panic. “Please!”

“It’s all right!” Ben exclaims, grabbing his arms and trying to calm him. “Dietrich, it’s Ben and Brandeis and Helga and Karo!”

“Calm down,” Helga adds anxiously, rising from her seat at his bedside and helping Ben to hold him down, “calm down, Dietrich, please —”

“It’s okay!” Ben cries, as Dietrich continues to writhe against his grip, his eyes rolling white like a terrified horse’s. He’s breathing hard and shallow, too fast.

“It’s okay, it’s _okay,”_ Helga repeats desperately.

“No —  _no,”_ Dietrich moans, agonised, half-mad. “Leave me alone!” he cries, when Ben tries again to grab hold of his flailing arms. “Leave me _alone!”_

And then he stops squirming at once, seeming to come back to himself. He’s still breathing hard. He catches sight of the soft cast on his arm — and then he reaches for it, and starts to unwind the gauze as if hypnotised. Ben’s hand rests feebly on his shoulder, unable to stop him.

Dietrich undoes the gauze down to his fingers: the ring finger and pinkie are encased in their own separate splint. Both are broken.

“I’ll never play again,” Dietrich breathes, almost lucid. His voice is curiously emotionless. “But he forgot about Django,” he adds, apparently to himself. He begins unfurling the separate bandage as well, exposing the two broken fingers. Ben, watching him, is deeply unnerved by the detached precision of his movements: where is the nervous, fidgeting boy they all know so well?

“Django Reinhardt played with two fingers,” Dietrich continues, defiant. His voice wavers. His friends stare at him, afraid to move, to speak, as if to break his trance. “So can I!” he says with determination. He slides the last of the cast off with a wince; Helga looks like she’s going to be sick.

“See?” Dietrich says softly. His hand is all exposed. “They look just like Django’s.”

The skin between his ring and little fingers is a cracked and broken mess. A horrid purple cut snakes its way across his hand, diverging up each of the broken digits like a swollen and terrible river. The nail of his pinkie is black with blood, the rest of his hand darkly bruised.

“He didn’t need these two fingers,” Dietrich says, looking up at his friends with a queer light in his eyes. His brow is damp with sweat.

“Who did this to you?” Hux asks, gentle but firm. “Who said you’d never play again?”

Dietrich’s head flops back to hit the pillow. He caresses his mangled fingers as if they belong to someone else, and are causing him no pain. His voice is still so strangely empty when he answers, after a moment, “Some HJs.”

Hux exhales slowly. Ben grits his teeth. They understand, now, why Dietrich had been so frightened: they are both wearing their HJ blacks, and had been standing over him when he awoke.

“What happened?” Karo asks, sorrow heavy in her voice and her face. “Tell us, Dietrich, please.”

“We’ll get back at those bastards,” Hux adds, his jaw working. “I swear it.”

Dietrich gives a long sigh. “I was walking home from the docks, after school yesterday,” he says listlessly, “trying a new dance step.” He winces when he says it, as if remembering the effort and strain. “And these HJs — there were two of them, at first — they came out of nowhere. I was dancing, I wasn’t paying attention; and then I looked up and there they were. I didn’t even hear them approach.

“I tried just to walk by them, but they wouldn’t let me. The first one, the taller one, he said, _Keep dancing, swing boy,_ or something like that — and I ignored him, I tried to keep walking — and then he grabbed my record from my hands. My brand-new Benny record,” he says, and he still sounds so _dead_. “I waited months for it. It came all the way from America. And he — the HJ, he took it from me — and he called me a _Jew-lover…_ and then he…”

The words catch in his throat. Now, at last, emotion returns to his voice: his eyes are wet when he whispers, “He smashed it. On the pavement, right in front of me: he just _dropped_ it. It shattered into a million pieces. He didn’t even _care._ And he knocked my hat off, too,” Dietrich says. “Into the gutter. He laughed when I tried to pick it up. He called me a pansy — said even his girlfriend didn’t wear her hair that long. And that’s when,” he says, his voice shaking, “that’s when I hit him.”

Helga winces, makes a little sound of dismay. Ben and Hux exchange a look with Karo: _Dietrich,_ hitting an HJ?

“I shoved him into the wall,” Dietrich tells them. “And I ran — I _tried_ to run. But they were too fast for me. I — I fell, and they caught up. They called me a cripple,” he says, and his voice is almost a whisper now, choked-up. “One of them grabbed me, pinned back my arms — and the other — the other asked for my name.” A brittle smile cracks across his beaten face. “I said my name was Django Reinhardt. He hit me, and he asked again, so I said, Duke Ellington.”

“Dietrich,” Karo whispers, shaking her head. There’s a tiny bit of pride in her chiding.

“There were more of them by then, two more, and they came over to see what was going on,” Dietrich continues doggedly. “I recognised one of them — it was Ernst Thomasson,” he recalls, directing his words to Hux, whose face shows an instant flicker of disgust at the name. “And at first, it seemed like they were — like _he_ was going to call the others off. I was hopeful, for a moment…” He shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut. “Thomasson punched me. Right in the face. My — my glasses broke, and I fell, and then they kicked me. All four of them. I — I had my umbrella; it had fallen — I tried to reach for it, on the ground — but then…” He sucks in a breath. “Thomasson. He stepped on my fingers. I heard the bones breaking.”

Helga gives a stifled sob. Hux’s face is a mask of hatred. 

“‘Let’s hear you play that nigger kike music now,’” Dietrich quotes, his eyes empty. “That’s what he said. I remember. And then he stepped on them again. I think I fainted, after that.”

There are silent tears pouring down Helga’s cheeks. Mutely, Karo pulls the other girl close again, her lips pressed tightly together. Ben’s eyes are wide and furious, his hands almost trembling with rage. Hux alone stands perfectly immobile, staring into empty space. There is fire and loathing in his eyes.

“I don’t know how I got here,” Dietrich admits.

“The Orpo,” Helga says, raising her wet face from Karo’s shoulder. “Someone saw you and called them. They called for an ambulance, and then they went to your house to tell your parents. I was outside when they came. I went over, and asked your mother what had happened, and she was crying — and your sister, too — your father came home from work and we all rushed here to see you…” She breaks off crying again.

“Thank you, Helga,” Dietrich says, soft and timid. “And thank you for bringing my books and clothes.” He gestures weakly to the little pile of his things, abandoned by Helga on the chair when Dietrich’s eyes had opened.

“You’re welcome,” she whispers. Their eyes meet, and Dietrich gives a feeble, gentle smile, and at last Helga smiles too, through her tears.

“We should go,” Karo says softly. She looks to Ben and Hux. “It’s getting late.”

“Do you need anything else?” Hux asks, breaking his rigid silence. The lightness in his voice is painfully forced. “Shame about the radio, it’d really have livened things up in here.”

“That’s all right, Brandeis,” Dietrich answers him, smiling weakly. “I’d like today’s homework, I suppose — it won’t do for me to fall behind,” he says, pragmatic as ever. He looks down at his left hand, his writing hand, and winces: “I’ll need help.”

“I’ll stay,” Helga says at once. “I’ll help.”

Dietrich smiles at her — “Thank you, Helga” — and she smiles back, blushing.

“Come on,” Ben interjects, touching the small of Hux’s back. “Let’s go.”

“Goodbye, Dietrich, Helga,” Karo says; the two of them wave, and Karo and the boys troop out of the room.

At the door, Hux glances back for a moment, his face unreadable.

“Hux,” Ben beckons. “Come on. He’s all right. He’s going to be fine.”

Dietrich and Helga are engaged in a conversation already, voices low, gazes intent on each other. Dietrich says something, shy and quiet, that makes Helga laugh, and with the sleeve of her cardigan she brushes tear-tracks from her face.

“Yes,” Hux says, turning away at last and following his friends down the hall. “He’ll be fine, and Ernst Thomasson will pay. I’ll make sure of it.”

*

They have a boxing lesson at that week’s HJ meeting, a few days later, in the gymnasium at the community hall. A boxing ring has been set up in the centre of the room; the walls are generously decked with Nazi slogans and propaganda posters. _Flink wie Windhunde, zäh wie Leder, hart wie Kruppstahl,_ says bold black script above the back doors, quoting Hitler: _Swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel._ Thus are the boys of the HJ to be.

“Scharführer Thomasson was the boxing champion this year in your division,” the Bahnführer tells the boys, as they crowd around him in their black gym shorts and white undershirts with the HJ flag on the chest, their raucous talk quieting down as he speaks. Ernst Thomasson, a short, slim, dark-eyed boy with a thatch of blond hair and a face like a rat, stands at his side with his arms crossed, as if daring any of them to challenge his title. “He will be instructing you in the basic techniques.”

Ben glances at Hux, who is standing at his side and looking at Thomasson with unbridled detestation. The two have always disliked each other, and have gotten into some violent scuffles at school over the years. It was Thomasson who started the rumour, in their first year of secondary school, that Hux was fathered illegitimately with a supposed mistress of Dr Hux’s; and even now, in their last year, Hux still has not forgiven him.

What Thomasson and his friends did to Dietrich was, Ben knows, the last nail in the coffin. _He will pay,_ Hux had promised the other day; and Ben has the uneasy feeling that today will be the day that he fulfils that vow.

“I’ll leave you to it,” the Bahnführer tells Thomasson.

The rodent-faced boy gives a tight, smug nod. “Yes, Bahnführer.” He steps into the ring, dipping between the ropes in his sock-feet. “Will someone volunteer to demonstrate?” Thomasson calls snidely to his peers. “Or do I have to pick?”

Ben doesn’t stop Hux in time: he puts up his hand. “I’ll volunteer,” Hux calls back, cold and cocky.

The heads of the boys in front of them turn to look. Murmurs arise: most of these boys go to school with them, and are well aware of Hux and Thomasson’s turbulent history.

“Good,” says Thomasson, clipped. A nasty half-smile hovers on his face. “I’m glad to see a new recruit so eager.”

Hux says nothing, only nods. The crowd parts for him, and for Ben too, who follows him automatically, hanging back only when they reach the edge of the ring. Hux enters, dons the brown leather boxing gloves Thomasson hands him.

“Let’s see how you do when you’re not fighting a cripple.”

Hux’s words are barely audible. But Thomasson hears them, and his unpleasant face turns uglier still with anger. He raises his fists. Hux mirrors him, and they circle each other, two baited dogs before a fight.

Hux makes the first swipe. Thomasson ducks, and retaliates with one swift blow to the underside of Hux’s jaw — and then another. Hux makes a surprised sound, his head knocking back on his neck. Ben hovers on the sidelines, his eyes flicking fretfully between the two of them.

“Keep your punches close to your shoulder. Otherwise, you leave yourself unprotected,” Thomasson calls out to the raptly watching group of boys, who are already muttering amongst themselves, making bets and predicting moves. He sounds, to Ben at least, infuriatingly self-satisfied.

Hux’s face darkens at the subtle taunt. His lips twist into a sneer, and he strikes three times, quick and furious, at Thomasson — but he misses every time. The shorter boy ducks and blocks and dodges with a mean hard light in his eyes, another barb seeming about to spill from his lips: and then Hux hits him.

A few boys cheer —  _“Yeah!_ Get him!” — and Ben feels a spike of hope.

Hux hits him again. He backs him up against the ropes and pummels him, in the stomach, the chest — the boys’ cheers grow rowdier; but then Thomasson shoves him off. He strikes a jab at Hux’s face again, and again Hux’s head jerks back, a primal grunt jarred from his throat.

“Attacking your opponent’s body brings his hands down,” Thomasson says through gritted teeth. He demonstrates, pounding punches in rapid succession into Hux’s stomach and groin. Hux gives an angry cry as he tries to block the hits. His pomaded hair is falling in his eyes, which are fierce and wild now, frightening.

Thomasson swoops up and cracks a dreadful hook to Hux’s right cheekbone. His head is forced violently to the other side — Ben nearly cries out at the sound of Thomasson’s fist meeting bone — and Hux stumbles into the ropes. Ben steps still closer to the ring, lays a hand on the rope as if to climb over and step in, but he daren’t move any further.

“Making his head more vulnerable,” Thomasson finishes, disgustingly superior.

Hux rises back up from the ropes with a vicious look in his eye. Quick as a flash, he lands a punch to Thomasson’s face. The other boy gives an _oomph_ and stumbles back, caught completely by surprise. Another wave of shouts rises up from the boys watching: they’re none too fond of Thomasson, either.

All too soon, the smaller boy is back up, an ugly welt rising on his cheek and fury writ large on his face. He raises his hands, teeth bared in a grimace, and goes straight for Hux’s face again, all pretence of demonstration gone. When Hux stays steady at the blow, Thomasson strikes his head again — and this time Hux falls, a gurgling groan escaping him. He lands hard on the ground. Ben grips the ropes, white-knuckled.

“Never be caught against the ropes,” Thomasson announces, cruel triumph in his voice. On his knees, Hux staggers, wavering back and forth. “Thank you, Herr Hux; you’ve been most helpful.”

The crowd of boys is talking louder now, made lively and unruly by the violence. Ben imagines vaulting the ropes, throttling Thomasson with his bare hands. _Hux. Hux. He’s all right, he_ must _be all right — but he isn’t getting up._

And indeed, Hux has not yet stood. He turns his head, slowly, to glare at Thomasson, and he says, his voice icy with rage, “Go to hell, _Hurensohn.”_

It was the wrong thing to say.

There is a pause, and then Thomasson’s eyes light up with wicked glee. “Did _you_ call _me_ a whoreson?” he asks, loud enough for all the boys to hear. They fall silent.

Hux closes his eyes, realising his mistake too late.

“I think you’ve got that wrong,” Thomasson says casually. “Last I checked, _I_ wasn’t the son of some _slut,”_ he continues. “But you, on the other hand, Herr _Unehelich…”_ He trails off with a laugh like breaking glass.

Hux is still on the ground, looking down, fairly trembling with rage. Ben can see blood on his face.

Thomasson turns around and moves to the front of the boxing ring, addresses the crowd of restless boys. “I’ll need another volunteer,” he says, nonchalant — and then all at once he is drowned out by shouts of “Ernst, _watch out!”_

Hux has picked himself up off the floor and now lunges at the smaller boy. As Thomasson turns in shock to him, Hux clocks him fiercely in the face, the _thud_ of leather on skin echoing in the high-ceilinged room. Thomasson blunders, doesn’t react fast enough; Hux hits him again, and again, and again, sending his head flying from side to side as his own had done just moments ago. He backs him up against the ropes and punches him in the gut, determined and rhythmic. The boys are all cheering for him, shouting his name: “Yeah! Hux! Get him, get that son-of-a-bitch!”

He swipes at Thomasson’s face, back and forth, back and forth, his own features set in deep anger. Thomasson manages to land a punch, but Hux retaliates at once, striking faster and harder. “That’s it! That’s _it!”_ Ben cries to him, a hysterical grin breaking across his face, both of them half-crazed.

Hux aims high, too wide, and misses, and Thomasson takes his chance to swerve out of his reach and pivot round, so now it’s Hux backed against the ropes again. Before Hux can defend himself, Thomasson jabs upward once, twice, sending blood gushing from Hux’s nose.

“C’mon, Hux, out of his way —  _move!”_ Ben shouts desperately, hanging onto the ropes to keep himself from charging at Thomasson and finishing this off himself. Hux is panting, stumbling out of Thomasson’s reach; both boys are bleeding now. They won’t be able to keep it up much longer.

In a last burst of rage, Thomasson half-dances across the ring and strikes three more blows to Hux’s face. Groans of pain slip from Hux’s lips: he’s weakening, and they all can see it.

_ “Yield!” _   Ben cries out, distraught.

Thomasson shoves Hux up to the post in the corner of the ring, pinning him there by the throat. “Had enough?” he grits out.

Hux breathes, hard, his face flushed and bloody, and for a moment Ben hopes, prays that he will give in, that he will stop trying to prove himself and just accept defeat, keep himself _safe_ for once instead of worrying about his pride — but then he growls, _“No,”_ and strikes the hand from his throat.

Thomasson punches him hard in the stomach. Hux cries out and crumples in on himself.

_ “Stop!” _   Ben shouts.

Improbably, impossibly, Hux rights himself again, and raises his fists. “Come on,” he pants. “Come _on!”_

Thomasson punches him twice more in the face.

“You’ve proved your point, Hux!” Ben roars, beside himself.

_ “Enough?”   _ Thomasson shouts at Hux. Both their faces are covered in blood. Merciless, Thomasson continues his assault, bringing Hux almost to his knees and then forcing him against the ropes.

“Ernst, that’s enough! _Stop!”_ come the cries from the crowd, but they fall on deaf ears. Hux is caught helpless, unable to defend himself as Thomasson pounds at him again and again; and now finally Ben cannot take any more.

He lifts the ropes and enters the ring, strides in a fury to Thomasson and wrenches him off Hux, throwing him to one side with a cry of “That’s _enough!”_

Hux falls to the floor, moaning in pain. Ben is at his side at once. Hux coughs feebly, his arm shaking as he tries to hold himself up on one elbow; Ben lays a frantic hand on his face, forces him to look at him. “Are you all right?” he asks desperately. “Hux?”

Hux catches his breath, struggling, and gives the smallest nod. He looks up.

Thomasson looms over them, and tosses his gloves down at Hux’s side. “Lesson’s over, _Swing Heine,”_ he jeers. “Bastard.” And he strides off, arrogant and cruel in his ill-gotten victory.

Hux sinks back down onto the mat. Ben, gently, takes his arm and slings it round his own shoulders, helps Hux slowly to standing and guides him out of the ring. Some other boys crowd around and hold the ropes up for them, offering their hands to help Hux step down. A few of them clap him on the back as they go: “You put up a good fight, Hux,” one of them tells him. “Thomasson didn’t play fair.”

Hux can only nod weakly in response.

They go into the changing-rooms, and Ben wets a towel with cold water, dabs the blood from Hux’s nose with utmost, anxious care. Hux closes his eyes and winces when he touches him, but he utters no word of protest. Ben cleans him up tenderly and gingerly until his injuries become more clearly visible, and reveal themselves to be much less severe than they’d looked: “A split lip,” Ben says, touching it lightly with the towel, “cuts on your forehead and your cheekbone, here, and a bruised nose. It’s not broken, I don’t think,” he says. “Thank God.”

“Yes,” Hux agrees quietly. He sounds stuffed-up, young; his hands are still trembling, and he stares at them like they’ve betrayed him. He opens and closes his fists, apparently lost for words. “He’s a liar,” he spits out suddenly. “A horrid, filthy liar.”

“I know,” Ben soothes him. It had been more than foolish of Hux to volunteer to fight Thomasson, and his choice of insult, unfortunately, had also been his mistake alone. But the other boy had been cruel, cold-blooded cruel: not just here, but at school for all those years, remarking loudly on Hux’s red hair compared to his blond parents’, throwing around snide comments about Dr Hux and his female patients…and then hurting Dietrich the other day, beating him senseless with three of his friends. _Hatred,_ Ben thinks. _He had no reason but hatred to hurt him like that._

“I don’t believe him,” Ben tells Hux. “You know I don’t — I would never. And the other boys, they don’t either. I’m sure of it.”

Hux nods, just once, looking down at his hands. “Yes,” he says, leaden. “I’m sure you’re right.” He swallows.

“Hux,” Ben says gently. When Hux doesn’t look up, he puts a finger under Hux’s chin and tilts it up so their eyes meet. “You’re named for him,” he reminds him. “Brandeis Hux the Second. You’re his son. No one can question that.”

“And yet they do,” Hux remarks lifelessly.

Ben sighs. “Don’t listen to them. Not any of them. Especially not Ernst Thomasson.”

“He hurt Dietrich,” Hux reminds him. “He put him in the hospital.”

“I know,” Ben says, “and you’ve more than avenged him, now. You’re lucky he didn’t put _you_ in the hospital, too,” he says. He imbues every word with the wrenching fear he’d felt, watching him in the ring; he looks Hux in the eyes, deadly serious, until finally Hux flinches uncomfortably and looks away. Ben has made his point now, too.

“Come on,” Hux says. “Help me get dressed. My father will be expecting me home.”

Ben helps him dress, back in the HJ blacks they now wear every day. Hux fiddles awkwardly with his neckerchief in front of the mirror, a glint of distaste in his eye. His hands tremble, tightening it, and Ben steps in to help, sliding the wooden fastener up where it belongs.

“Thank you,” Hux murmurs. He heaves a shaking sigh. Fresh blood weeps slowly from the cut at his lip.

Ben glances around to verify that they’re alone. When he has made sure they are, he leans in and presses a gentle, grateful, sorrowful kiss to Hux’s mouth, cautious of the cut. He tastes blood.

“You’re all right,” Ben says softly. “I promise.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Orpo" is short for _Ordnungspolizei,_ the regular police force under the Third Reich; _unehelich,_ as Thomasson calls Hux, means "illegitimate". Apologies to Thomas Brodie-Sangster for saying mean things about his face.
> 
> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com). Thank you so much to everyone who's been commenting and sending me messages about this fic — your support means the world to me. ❤️


	7. Chapter 7

_*_

_“ Pow! Pow! Pow!”_ Ben says, miming punches to Karo’s gut.

Later that same evening, after the HJ meeting, the four of them are in the Meissners’ basement. Dietrich is home from the hospital, but confined to bed while he heals; the cuts on his face are getting better, but he’ll never have the same dexterity in his left hand again. Hux, for his part, lounges on the chesterfield, bearing his face of fresh black-and-purple bruises with rueful pride.

“Three times in the stomach, Hux _won’t_ go down,” Ben continues proudly, re-enacting the fight for Dietrich’s benefit, with Karo as his unwilling assistant. Dietrich, poor man, doesn’t seem to care all that much; he’s quiet and tired-looking, propped-up in bed and paging apathetically through a jazz magazine, occasionally raising a cigarette to his lips. But Ben continues undeterred:

“Tables turn. _Pow-pow-pow-pow!_ Right to the face!”  His imaginary blows are enthusiastic and wild, his grin gleeful as a boy’s, just as if he’d won the fight himself. He continues swiping at Karo ( _“Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!”),_ and she blocks her face with her hands, rolling her eyes. Finally she says, “Okay, _okay,”_ removing herself from the demonstration and lifting her forgotten, smouldering fag to her lips.

 _“Right_ to the face. You have to see Thomasson!” Ben insists.

“His face looks like it’s been bent sideways,” Hux confirms, nodding, as Karo takes a seat next to him on the couch.

“You look pretty bad yourself,” Karo says frankly, raising her eyebrows and offering him her cigarette. He waves it away.

“It was murderistic,” Ben pronounces definitively. Karo offers him the cigarette, but he too declines: “We can’t. They smell your breath,” he explains, regretful.

Dietrich, on the bed, tosses his magazine aside with a sigh and taps his cigarette into the ashtray on his night-stand. “Maybe we shouldn’t play this music,” he comments. ( _“It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing,”_ adds Billy Banks from the phonograph.) “They might listen to your ears.”

He gets up to turn off the music. Hux and Ben exchange a glance, startled by his cynicism.

Karo’s noticed it, too. “So what’s it like, anyway, the HJ?” she asks quickly.

“Well, it’s —” Hux begins.

“Stupid as hell,” Ben finishes for him, shaking his head. “All we do is memorise the Führer’s _period of struggle_ and all this other stuff.”

“Almost as boring as it is here,” Hux adds. Ben knows he means it in jest, but there’s a slight bitterness to his tone all the same. Ben can tell he’s uncomfortable: he feels like he should have done more to hurt Thomasson for what he did to Dietrich, but at the same time he resents their friend, for having given him — or so he says — a reason to fight him in the first place.

Ben knows that’s absurd: _he would have fought him anyway._ But then, if he’s not angry at Dietrich for that, then why is he angry with him at all? Ben can’t shake the feeling that Hux is _looking_ for reasons to be cruel to their poor friend, and he has no idea why.

“You don’t have to be here,” Dietrich counters. He grabs his guitar from beside his bed and swings it awkwardly onto his lap, his brace and his injured hand making his movements difficult. There’s an uncharacteristic hardness in his tone when he adds, “Don’t you have some marching to do?”

Ben frowns. He can tell that Hux is about to fire back some scathing response, so quickly he steps in. “We didn’t _want_ to join. We had to.”

 _“He_ had to,” Dietrich points out, jutting his chin to Hux. He puts his fingers to the guitar strings, his movements stiff and careful. “What’s your excuse?”

“I’m his friend,” Ben says coolly.

Dietrich looks up. “So am I,” he argues. “And I didn’t join.”

“No,” Hux speaks up, his voice cold. “They wouldn’t accept you.”

Dietrich freezes. An awful tension fills the air. Ben’s eyes flick back and forth between the two of them.

And then there is a knock at the door. A five-note whistle is heard: _It don’t mean a thing…_

“Come in,” Dietrich calls sharply.

“Dietrich, you’ll never guess what I found,” comes a cheerful female voice from the door. Hux, Ben, and Karo turn their heads in surprise to find Helga hurrying into the room, beaming. “I was at Silke’s house, and — oh!”

She catches sight of Ben, perched on the corner of a couch across from Dietrich’s bed. “Hi,” she says, her head whipping around, clearly taken aback by the sight of the three of them. Ben gives her a small wave, a half-smile.

Dietrich moves his guitar and pulls himself out of bed, wrapping his red dressing-gown tighter around himself. “Hi, Helga,” he greets her, smiling, all trace of hostility gone from his voice and replaced with his usual shy sweetness. “C’mon in.”

Hux frowns in Helga’s direction. “Hi,” Karo says politely, as if to make up for him. Helga shoots her a nervous smile.

“What’s the matter?” Helga asks. “Everyone in here looks sadder than a map.”

“When did she become a member?” Hux asks bluntly.

Dietrich’s hands stiffen at his sides. “If we can let HJs in,” he answers, his voice steady, “we can let her in.”

Helga cautiously takes a seat in an armchair, cradling the record she’s brought in her lap as if afraid one of them might steal it. She watches Hux with trepidation.

“And why’s that?” Hux retorts. “I went after Thomasson because of what he did to you, and all the thanks I get is a bunch of superior remarks?”

Ben tenses.

“I never asked you to fight him!” Dietrich protests, his brows knitting together. He glowers at Hux.

“Hey,” Ben speaks up. “What’s the matter with you? Thomasson almost _killed_ you.”

“So we’re even!” Dietrich shoots back, almost hysterical. His plump face is pale, the cuts standing out vividly red. “Now we can all be friends,” he adds, a note of manic determination in his voice.

Ben just frowns at him, utterly baffled. _What’s gotten into him? Who_ is _this?_

“You’re fitting right in,” Dietrich continues weakly, as if he’s being forced to. “Listening to the same music, wearing the same clothes, getting into the same fights — it’s almost like being a swing kid, isn’t it?” His eyes glimmer wetly. He takes a deep breath and then adds, defiant, “Though if you never liked the music to begin with, I guess there’s really no difference.”

He turns away, going to a shelf or to his bed.

Ben doesn’t even see Hux winding up his arm until he’s thrown the pack of cigarettes: straight at Dietrich’s back, his face made ugly with anger.

It hits him smack in the head. Dietrich turns round, stunned, and then all at once he’s charging for Hux, and Hux is rising from his seat, shouting, “You want to start something?” And then they’re grappling with each other, Hux’s pale hands gripping Dietrich’s thin weak shoulders with vicious brute strength, Dietrich writhing in his grasp and shouting, hurling incoherent insults, calling Hux a traitor, a bastard, a pig —

Ben lunges at them in an effort to pull them apart; Karo flies up and joins in to help. Helga sits watching in horror, wide-eyed.

“Calm down, Hux!” Ben is shouting, as Karo tries to pry Dietrich away, yelling, _“Stop!_ Stop, let go, you’ll hurt yourself!”

With a great burst of strength Ben at last wrenches them apart. _“Leave_ it!” he commands fiercely.

Dietrich stumbles back, quaking; Hux is seething, his teeth clenched tight and his eyes like fire. They stand apart, staring at each other in furious silence: Ben and Karo hover, ready to jump in and intercede again if either of them makes a move for the other. Helga has gotten up from her chair and stands motionless, her bottom lip trembling.

Dietrich moves first. He limps over to the window and lights another cigarette, his hands shaking.

“Damn it,” Ben curses. Hux resumes his former place on the chesterfield, resting his forehead sulkily in his hand and giving a peevish sigh. “What’s the matter with you? What do you want us to do?” Ben pleads with Dietrich.

“Ben joined because of me,” Hux reminds him, expressionless.

“If anyone’s changed around here, it’s you,” Ben says forcefully to Dietrich, genuinely upset.

“Oh, no,” Dietrich retorts, turning back around to face him and shaking his head. _“I_ haven’t changed.”

“Yes you have,” Ben protests. “You sit in here all day, you don’t want to go out with us —”

Dietrich looks like he’s about to cry. His chin quivers, but he stays silent, swallowing hard.

“There’s a party at the Trichter tomorrow,” Ben tells him, softer now: a peace offering.

Dietrich stares at the shuttered window and makes no reply.

“Dietrich?” Karo speaks up gently. If he’ll listen to anyone, it’s her.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, detached. “We have to practice” — meaning the band at the Bismarck, with whom he hasn’t been able to play since the incident.

Ben bites his lip. Hux heaves another sigh.

“Fine,” Ben says. “But remember: _we’re_ still making time for our friends.”

“Fine,” Dietrich repeats. “But I have to practice.” He looks back at them. “You should go.”

Ben nods. He goes to the door; Karo follows. Hux glances once more at Dietrich, and then joins them, his coat slung over his arm. Helga, forgotten, hesitates — Dietrich indicates that she stay. Hux gives an audible scoff.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go.”

They go, leaving a coldness and a strangeness behind them.

*

Ben and Hux say goodnight to Karo and then walk home to the Huxes’: it’s Friday, and Ben’s to spend the night. Hux is silent on the walk, kicking at litter and snowbanks, his hands stuffed down in the pockets of his coat. Ben lets him sulk.

They step inside the French front doors of the manor. There’s no one there to open them: Hux’s parents are hosting a dinner-party tonight, so Elena is needed in the kitchen. The scents of cigar-smoke and perfume waft out from the parlour, across from the front doors; Hux’s beautiful Golden Retriever, Millicent, rests her head on her paws on the rug. Ben notices several folded copies of the _Völkischer Beobachter,_ the Party newspaper, displayed prominently on the coffee table, but —

“Hitler is a madman!” comes a loud voice from inside. “He’s trying to get us into a war with the whole world!”

Ben recognises the voice as belonging, improbably, to Hux’s father. The doctor is usually a stern, solemn, silent man, but now there is a strange, intense animation in his voice. Hux is taking off his coat, absently holding out his hand for Ben’s too, going to hang them in the closet — but he pauses, frowning, when he hears his father’s words.

The argument in the parlour continues: “The army will put a stop to that,” a new voice counters. This one, too, is male and lively, but unfamiliar to Ben.

Hux’s father scoffs. “We mustn’t rely on the army,” he retorts. He had been half-hidden by one of the parlour doors, but now he stands from his wing-backed chair and goes over to the sideboard. He is lean like his son, with the exception of a potbelly restrained by his dress-shirt; his hair, which had been blond, is now a striking silver, although he is hardly fifty-five years old. He’s dressed smartly all in black, the suit cut bespoke to his figure. His nose is sharp like Hux’s, but where his son’s is pale and freckled, the doctor’s is red with burst blood vessels.

“Oh, I _wish_ you would stop talking politics,” sighs Claudia Hux, looking distant but radiant in a deep-red evening dress and a fine string of pearls. She sits in the chair far opposite her husband, with their two guests on a white damask divan between them; a little table at her elbow holds a full glass of wine. She looks distracted, not all there, as she usually does, fidgeting with her gloved hands as her husband and their dining companion argue. “What do doctors know of such things?” she points out. “My father always said a man with a family shouldn’t even _think_ about —”

“Your _father._ When did your father ever think about anything?” Dr Hux cuts his wife off, frowning deeply as he picks up a cut-crystal decanter and refills his glass.

Hux and Ben have remained in the entryway for this whole exchange, watching in silence; but now, as his father raises his voice even slightly at his mother, Hux nudges Ben and motions that they go upstairs, holding a finger to his lips. They sneak around the corner and make it one or two steps up the stairs — but then Millicent spots her master.

She barks twice in greeting, getting up from the parlour rug and padding over to Hux on the stairs, her tongue hanging out happily. Her collar jingles as she bounds up the steps: Hux kneels quickly to greet her, glancing at the parlour. Millie barks again, louder, and Ben winces.

The conversation in the other room stops abruptly. “Who’s there?” calls Dr Hux with suspicion. “Brandeis? Is that you?”

Hux says nothing, his hands moving slowly through Millicent’s fur, his lips pressed tight together. Ben is frozen, completely silent, bizarrely afraid that should one of the adults come over and see them, they will deduce at once what it is they intend to do once they are upstairs and alone.

“Brandeis?” Dr Hux repeats sharply.

“Yes, Vater!” Hux finally shouts back, strained. “And Benjamin.” He looks up at Ben and mouths, _Sorry._

“Well, come in, both of you, and say hello to our guests,” his father commands him loudly.

Hux curses under his breath. He stands reluctantly — Millie bounding down the stairs ahead of him — and raises his eyebrows at Ben, who follows him into the parlour.

“Brandeis,” Claudia says, rising at once when she sees his bruises. “Your face!” She reaches up as if to touch it, but stops, her hand hovering just above. The dinner guests have stood up too, concerned; Ben lingers inside the doorway, unsure of his place.

“Son,” Dr Hux announces, apparently unconcerned with the state of his face, “you remember Herr Doktor Kepler and his wife. They’re here from Berlin.”

 _“Brandeis!”_ Claudia says sharply, to her husband this time. Her hand falls to Hux’s shoulder, protective. Ben blinks: he has never seen Frau Hux touch her son.

“Perhaps I had better get my bag,” Dr Kepler pipes up uncertainly.

“Brandeis, you haven’t said hello yet,” says Dr Hux, ignoring.

Claudia’s hand moves nervously on Hux’s shoulder, stroking the fabric of his uniform. The clasp of the pearl bracelet on her wrist glimmers in the light. Hux is silent; Ben sees the way his shoulders are hunched, and knows that anger is simmering quietly in his veins.

“Hello, Herr Dr Kepler, Frau Kepler,” Hux finally says, giving jerky little head-bobs to them both, his tone aggressively light. He shifts under his mother’s touch, unused to it.

“Benjamin,” Dr Hux says now, nodding to Ben at the door. “Good evening.”

 _“Guten Abend_ , _”_ Ben returns weakly, frightened by the doctor’s cold politeness and not knowing what else to do. Hux’s eyes flick to him.

“Brandeis, for God’s sake,” Claudia Hux implores her husband angrily.

“I’m all right, Mother,” Hux tells her, impatient.

“He’s more than _all right,”_ Dr Hux pronounces. “He’s in his _element!”_   He strides out from by the sideboard and moves nearer the doors, where Claudia, Hux, and Ben stand in a tense tableau. The visiting doctor and his wife are still standing, too, everyone held in a strange suspended animation by Dr Hux’s odd behaviour. “This is _exactly_ what I am talking about,” Dr Hux announces, gesturing with his glass of brandy to Hux and Ben themselves. “They all look _wonderful_ in their uniforms, don’t they?” he asks rhetorically of the room at large, his voice growing low with ironic passion.

Ben has often been wary of the doctor, but in this moment he finds he is truly frightened of him. Hux has told him stories, of course — no sugar-coating, no embellishment, merely recounting, almost without emotion, the horrid things his father has said and done to his mother and him — but Ben has never truly been able to picture them until now. There is an ominous undertone to the doctor’s grand pronouncements, a steely, deadly backbone to his drink-laced words and gestures.

“Our little _Adolfi_ is no fool,” Dr Hux continues, investing every word with a subtle kind of venom, his eyes flicking over Ben and Hux’s crisp black uniforms.

“Is that why you voted for him?” his son asks him, breaking his stony silence at last.

Hux turns his head to look at his father, letting him see the mottled bruising on his cheeks, the cuts on his brow-bone and below his eye; the left side of his lips is dark with blood, beginning to coagulate already. His eyes are hard as he stares down his father. Ben’s heart is pounding in his chest.

Dr Hux is stunned into silence, at first — but not for long. He raises one long, pale finger, so like his son’s, and points it firmly at Hux. “You don’t know the first thing about it,” he says, his words slow and thick with anger. “Now _go upstairs_ and get cleaned up,” he spits.

Hux nods.

He inclines his head to Dr Kepler and his wife (the doctor offers a half-hearted, sympathetic wave), and then turns on his heel and leaves the parlour, the heels of his boots clicking far too loudly on the floor. His mother looks anxiously after him. Ben follows him at once, too daunted even to bid the ladies goodnight.

When they are in the foyer, Dr Hux resumes the conversation in the parlour. “I suppose when I think about my family, I should hope that the Nazis stay in power forever,” he says. Hux pauses abruptly, nearly causing Ben to walk into him. “With them in charge, even a misfit like Brandeis might have a chance to make something of himself.”

Hux stands silent for a moment. Ben hesitates, unsure what to do: stung, for Hux, by what he’s just heard. _His own father…_

Hux seems to shake himself from his trance. He goes up the staircase quickly, his boots clomping loud, as if to make sure his father hears him, knows that he’s still there.

Ben follows, because, now as ever, that is all he can or will do.

*

That night Hux is rough with him. Once they have locked the bedroom door behind them, he throws himself fiercely on Ben; when he bites at his lip Ben cannot tell whose blood it is that he tastes. They shed their clothes with urgency, uniforms tossed to the floor as if they were rags without worth: heaped together in a mass of black, the red swastikas shining out like some angry god’s eyes.

Hux pushes Ben back onto the bed and climbs atop him, pressing his hips into Ben’s. Ben gasps, growing hard already, arching his back and letting Hux press bruising kisses to his throat, all down his chest, moving lower. His mouth is warm and harsh and wet and Ben cries out his name, unable to be cautious, powerless to do anything but gasp and shake and collapse back onto the mattress, spent.

When he has finished, Ben moves to touch Hux, to bring his hand between his legs; but Hux pushes him away.

“No, Ben,” he says. “Not tonight.”

He is half-hard, still, and there is a strange wild look in his eyes. Ben hesitates, his hand hovering.

“Not tonight,” Hux repeats. “Please.”

Ben relents, thrown. “You’re certain?”

Hux nods tightly. “I am.”

He rises from the bed, and Ben sees him shiver as the night air hits his naked skin. He goes to the washstand, rinses his mouth: spitting water and, Ben imagines, the taste of him back into the bowl, with what seems like unnecessary force. Ben feels trapped in limbo, in a dream, sensing something very wrong but powerless to do anything about it.

Hux wets a flannel, brings it back to bed and gives it to Ben. Slowly, still dazed, with his eyes on Hux all the while, Ben cleans himself and then hands the flannel back to Hux. He rinses it out in the sink with detached, methodical care.

When he comes back to bed he turns away from Ben, pulling the covers over himself as if to hide his nakedness. He does not speak.

“Hux?” Ben asks, tentative, almost scared to break the silence. "What is it? What's wrong?"

“He’s the one who made me join in the first place,” Hux spits suddenly, his words muffled. “It was selfish — it was all a ruse. He was trying to keep himself safe, making it look like he was a good Party member like the rest of them. But he’s not, and it won’t work. They’ll find out anyway. He’s a hypocrite and a traitor, and I’m sick of him.”

Ben, momentarily struck dumb by this tirade, recovers, and reaches over, touches his arm — “Hux?” he repeats worriedly. “What do you —”

Hux flinches from his touch. “Goodnight, Ben,” he says sharply. He rolls further onto his side, his green eyes squeezed tight shut. It is as if he is trying to erase Ben’s presence completely.

Ben is stunned. His mouth goes dry, his throat feels full of cotton. Hux has always had his sulks, his moods, his temper — but he has never been this way with Ben. _Not with me. Never with me._

“Goodnight,” Ben manages at last, the word forced from his throat. Hux’s breathing has already begun to deepen and even; but Ben lies awake, throat tight and heart pounding, his mind racing in fretful circles for what seems like hours.

When he looks back, later, Ben will remember tonight as the beginning of the end.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for killing the post-trailer buzz, yikes. *clears throat delicately* If you'd care to yell at me for that, or anything else, hit me up [here](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) or [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mild violence, as well as racism and anti-Semitism in the form of Nazi propaganda.

*

They dress up sharp to go to the Trichter the next night, Saturday. Hux wears a navy-blue pinstriped blazer, his white shirt-collar popped high; yellow silk waistcoat, deep-red tie. A creamy square of silk spills from his breast pocket in careful disarray. Ben’s own things are far less fine: brown jacket, brown waistcoat, patterned second-hand tie. The scarf around his neck was his father’s: Ben thinks it still smells of his cigarettes.

The band is playing Benny Goodman, _Sing Sing Sing,_ when they arrive; there is an electricity in the air, a sparking sense of life. They shake hands, exchange grins and _Swing Heils_ with the waiters and the people they know, and as they file from the dining-room out to the dance floor — the music getting louder with each step — Ben raises his hands as if receiving benediction. _Here we are._

They stay on the sidelines a moment, nodding along to the beat as they scan the crowd. The dancers are good, tonight: Ben sees countless pairs trying out high-flying, risky moves, whooping and giggling as they fly around the floor.

At a nearby table Hux spies a girl from school, a small brunette with big laughing eyes; she’s tiny, easy to throw around, and they’ve danced well together in the past. “Sophia!” he greets her, and holds out a hand.  “Let’s jitterbug.” Arm around her waist, he leads her out — without even a backward glance at Ben.

Ben is startled. They dance with girls more than they dance with each other when they go out, of course; but always, always, there is a private exchange, a wink or a glance shared between them, _You know it’s not really her that I want._ They laugh about it later, when they are alone, practising or doing other things: _You’re much less fun to toss around. Ah, but will she do this? — or this? — or this?_

Perturbed, Ben lingers at the edge of the floor: snapping his fingers in time, trying and failing to content himself with drinking in the sights, the sounds, the _swing..._

He can’t keep from watching Hux and his partner. As soon as they hit the floor, Hux picks the girl up as if she weighs nothing, and flips her over his shoulder, smooth and easy. Others are watching them too, ready to be impressed: “The king of swing!” someone hollers, clapping. Ben almost manages a smile.

As soon as Sophia lands, she grabs Hux’s hands and they fly through a jitterbug with expert ease. He picks her up; she throws her legs around his waist and he dips her, low, and then flips her over again. Her skirt flies up, exposing her bloomers to the crowd: she is unabashed, laughing. Both of them are breathing hard; Sophia grins, red-cheeked, blissful and unthinking; but Hux’s lips are parted in determination. He’ll be the best at this like he’s the best at everything else, or damn it all, he’ll stop dancing, Ben knows.

He cannot stop the ugly jealousy that curls and writhes within his chest, seeing Hux handle and partner this girl with such feeling and ease. They look, just now, like a couple in love, bodies pressed close without shame; Ben thinks he hears whispers in the crowd: _Look at them, so natural together; they’re stunning, aren’t they?_ It looks, right now, like they belong together, belong to each other.

_ And why shouldn’t they?   _ Ben reminds himself. _He’s barely mine_. _He can’t be mine — not truly, not really — and I can’t be his. Not here, not now, not anywhere._ He plasters on a smile and gives a whoop of Hux’s name, cheering him along with the crowd.

A jam circle forms up: Hux and Sophia grin and bow and cede the spotlight to another pair. (Ben feels a traitorous twinge of victory when their perfect dance comes to an end.) The new couple are fabulous; Ben’s never seen them before, but he thinks he’d like to watch them all night. The girl’s dark hair is short, marcel-waved close to her head; her green printed dress hugs her figure like a second skin, the skirt flying up in a tease when she jumps or is lifted. Her partner is strapping and tall, blond and wiry and beaming, and they zip round the floor with exuberance and style.

Other pairs soon join them — a couple in red, the strong stocky girl dancing the man’s part and lifting her slim gentleman with ease, lindy-flipping him over her back; a girl in pink and her partner in brown, flashing open-mouthed grins as he flings her around — and then all at once the floor is full, the whole party flooding out to dance.

Ben has lost Hux in the crowd: he disappeared, with Sophia, into the throng of people, while Ben stayed to watch the jam. He looks around for him, and spots him on the opposite side of the floor, Sophia still close by his side; but Hux catches Ben’s eye, and he grins and calls, “Come on!” — and Ben is so relieved, so convinced by this simple gesture that everything is all right, that he had been imagining things before — that he grins too, and laughs aloud.

He whips off his scarf, sets it down on the nearest table, and steps out onto the floor. He dances solo for a moment, grinning at his fellow dancers, finding the rhythm.

(He does not mind this, being alone; but it is always better with him.)

They turn in the dance, the whole mass of them, and Ben spies Hux again: watching him. He is alone now, too; Sophia has found another partner, and dances with him. Ben holds Hux’s gaze, and then, a questioning smile on his face, he gives him a little bow.

Hux smiles back. Mercifully, blessedly, he smiles back. Ben grins wider now, and he beckons him over with both hands. _We’re all right. We’re fine. I was silly to think that we weren’t, before._

Hux comes to him. The bruises are so dark on his pale handsome face. Ben reaches for his hand, and they dance.

Once again, like last time at the Bismarck, they find themselves in the centre of the circle, all eyes on them. Everyone cheers for them. They are good: so good that no one minds, here, that they are boy and boy and not boy and girl. Sometimes, on nights like these, Ben can even forget that it matters, wonder why they should worry about it at all.

The song ends with a flourish, and they fall laughing into each other’s arms, Ben clapping Hux’s back and Hux’s green eyes crinkling with glee. All around them are cheers and shouts of their names, applause and whistling; and at the same time all there is are their hands where they touch each other, the spark where their gazes meet. Ben thinks, _This is all I’ve ever wanted, is the dancing, and Hux._ Ben thinks, _There is nothing more that I need._ Ben thinks, _If only it could always be like this._

And all too soon he is reminded why it can’t.

“Quiet! Quiet!” come the sudden shouts, as the orchestra plays their final chords, the dancers hooting and clapping for them just as they have done for each other. But from the back of the room, the MC cries out again, harsh and warning: “Stop!”

And then all at once the dance-floor is filled with boys in HJ blacks. They wrench couples from each other, pin hands behind backs: the girls cry out, and the boys try and fight back, kicking, shoving and shouting. Ben and Hux, far up front by the band, are among the last to notice their presence, still caught-up as they are in the applause — and then a man pulls out a megaphone and announces, “We are closing this club! We are _closing this club!”_

Everyone hears it, and the remaining merry clamour in the room is abruptly silenced.

“You must leave!” the Nazi continues. _“Immediately!_ You must give your names at the door! _”_

Ben’s eyes go wide. He looks to Hux, and sees panic mirrored on his face: _his father, his father will know._

“Leave! Immediately!” the strange man repeats.

The crowd starts to move again, as if released from a spell. Anxious murmurs fill the air as people begin to file out, or else try and free themselves from their HJ captors, shouting and elbowing and stepping on jackbooted toes.

“What do we do?” Hux breathes. His eyes have a queer empty look to them: pure fear, not of the HJs and the situation at hand, but of what his father will do if —  _when —_ he finds out.

“It’s okay,” Ben tells him at once, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay.” He glances around: HJs are wresting people from tables, shoving them in the direction of the doors. Girls’ shrieks rise up from the crowd as they are pushed roughly around. Ben grimaces, adrenaline spiking. “Come on.”

He makes to shepherd Hux through the panicked swarm, but he will not move. His eyes are fixed on an HJ, beating a fallen swing boy with his baton. The boy cries out, trying to shield his face, but the HJ does not relent. Hux’s trance seems to break. “God _damn_ them,” he bursts out, fiery fury in his voice. “God _damn —!”_   He makes to lunge for the scene.

_ “No!” _   Ben stops him, grabbing his arm fiercely. “We’re HJs. If we’re caught here, we’re dead. Come on — out the back, the alley.” And he seizes him and guides him away from the violence, before they both get hurt.

They grab their coats and scarves and then escape backstage, behind the backdrop and out through the wings, taking stairs down, down to ground level and emerging in the street. Ben glances down to the front entrance of the club and sees a large cluster of HJs standing guard, surrounded by Party cars; he hears the shrill blasts from the whistles they all carry, and he knows they’d better split, and fast. “Let’s go,” he says, and tugs Hux along.

They run. They run all the way back to the Solbergs’ apartment, and all the way up the stairs, too. Ben’s gotten a new key since the radio incident, and he fiddles hurriedly with the lock, Hux whispering “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” anxiously until finally he gets the door open, his hands made clumsy with their flight.

They burst inside and shut the door behind them. It slams too loudly in the still, sleeping flat: almost at once, a light flicks on from down the hall, and Lea comes running from her bedroom, wrapped in a big old dressing-gown of Hans’. _“Ben!”_ she hisses, frowning at him. “It’s the middle of the night, _please,_ your cousin is sleeping —” She breaks off: Hux has slumped into a kitchen chair, and she notices him now, takes in the bruises shining on his face. “Brandeis? What’s the matter?” She peers at Ben suspiciously, noticing for the first time the slight mania about the two of them. “Are you two all right?”

“Fine,” Hux pants, groaning and putting a hand to his side. “Sorry to disturb you, Frau Solberg.”

“What’s happened?” Lea demands, going to stand in front of her son and crossing her arms. “Where have you come running from?”

“The club, Mama,” Ben tells her reluctantly. He looks down at his boots, suddenly ashamed: _I told her I’d be more careful._ “There was a raid.”

“Another?” Lea’s eyes are wide with worry. She shakes her head, her lips pressed tight: “I don’t like it. I don’t want you going out anymore, Ben, if this is what’s going to happen. No more clubs.”

“Mama!” Ben protests, a knee-jerk response. “We’re HJs, they can’t —”

“Yes, they can,” Hux interjects wearily, having caught his breath again, “and they will. Come on, Ben. You know they’ll only punish us worse — if they don’t just kick us out instead.”

Ben meets his gaze, and the fight goes out of him. His shoulders slump. _Hux’s father. He can’t afford to risk this._

“You’re right,” Ben acquiesces, quiet. “I understand. It’s not safe. For either of us.” He sighs. “No more dancing.”

“No more dancing,” Hux repeats.

There is a hollow silence. Lea is the first to move, to speak.

“Brandeis,” she says, gentler now, “you’re welcome to spend the night here. It’s late.” _Your father,_ she means, _will be angry._

“Yes,” Hux says. “Yes, it is, but —” He pauses. He rises from the table, a slightly dazed look in his eyes. He shakes his head as if to clear it. “I should go home.”

“Hux,” Ben objects. “Your father, he won’t be happy — just stay here, you can sleep in my room —”

“No,” Hux interrupts him. He won’t look at Ben. “I should go. My mother will be worried.”

“Your mother,” Lea says. “Of course.” She, too, is at a loss: Hux has never refused an offer to spend the night before. Sometimes he has been the one to ask, quietly requesting shelter, refuge; and it has always been given him, without question.

Lea looks to Ben, and he can give her no answer. A coldness creeps its way up his throat.

“You’re sure?” Ben forces out. This strikes him harder than the raid.

Hux nods. “I’ll see you at school.” And he stands, straightens his scarf, and is gone.

The door clicks shut behind him. Ben glances at his mother, feeling lost. “He left,” he says.

“Yes.” Lea gives her son a searching look. “Are you all right?”

Ben makes himself nod.

“You weren’t hurt, at the club?”

Ben shakes his head. “No. I’m fine. They were — the HJs were hurting people, but we got away. I’m fine,” he repeats.

“All right. As long as you weren’t harmed.” Lea looks at him sadly. “I’m sorry, Ben, but I don’t think it’s safe for you to keep going out,” she tells him. “It’s too much of a risk.”

“I know,” Ben answers. He stares at the empty seat where Hux so recently sat. “And if Hux isn’t, either…” He trails off. _If I can’t dance with him, I don’t want to dance at all._

Lea seems to understand. “That makes it easier,” she says gently, “doesn’t it? You can focus on your studies, and on the…HJ activities.” Disgust colours her tone, and she flinches as if to rid herself of the taste. “For now, though — it’s late. You should go to bed.”

“Yes,” Ben agrees numbly. _No dancing. And Hux…Hux didn’t want to stay._ “Goodnight, Mama.” _What did I do wrong?_

He kisses her goodnight, embraces her for a brief moment: she feels small and frail in his arms. He goes down the hall to his and Rey’s room, and he sees the light in his mother’s room flick off again. Rey sleeps peacefully in her little single bed, one careless hand thrown over her face.

Ben undresses and tugs on pyjamas against the lingering winter chill. He shivers as he climbs between the sheets, and wills himself to sleep, mourning the space beside him where Hux would have slept.

*

Alberti’s record shop — the best place in Hamburg to buy jazz — gets shut down the very next day.

Ben and Hux are among the throng of HJs standing by as one of the shop’s employees is made to paste up posters: crude cartoons of an animal-looking black man with a Star of David on his jacket, playing the trumpet (a speech bubble indicating that this is _Swing),_ with _Verboten_ plastered in large letters across it all. _(Neger-Kike Musik,_ the bottom of the poster adds, in case the rest hadn’t made it clear enough.) The Bahnführer is using this as a lesson for the boys, a reminder of their ultimate purpose: the purification of German society through the removal of degenerate filth.

And now here they sit in their meeting, learning today about the supposed biological differences between Germans and Jews. “You are superior to the Jew,” a short, prematurely balding officer with jug-ears is earnestly telling the HJ recruits, tapping hand-drawn diagrams with his pointer: the German man handsome, blond-haired and strong, the Jew hunched, cruel-eyed, deformed. “You are _special._ You are _part_ of something special.”

Ben stares straight ahead, willing himself not to listen. _Lies. All of it._ Hux, at his side, shifts.

“He is your brother,” says the officer, pointing again to the drawing of the Aryan man.  “All of you are brothers.”

Ernst Thomasson sits in front of them, spinning his pencil between his fingers. Ben thinks of Dietrich, whose left hand will never again be that nimble. _Brothers._

In the hall after the meeting’s end, Ben and Hux are making to leave when an unfamiliar voice calls Hux’s name: “Brandeis!”

Startled, Hux turns, and Ben turns with him. They find Thomasson behind them.

“Brandeis,” Thomasson says, his beady dark eyes flicking between the two of them, “I just wanted to say that — I guess I still have something to learn about boxing.” He gives an uncomfortable grimace that might be an attempt at a smile.

Hux’s face registers surprise, but he says nothing. Ben stares with determination at the floor.

“You showed me,” Thomasson persists doggedly, “that strength of spirit can be just as powerful as technical skills.”

Ben nearly scoffs. These can’t be Thomasson’s own words; one of the leaders must have put him up to it, but who, and why…? The boys are allowed, even encouraged, to fight and compete within their own ranks, all in the name of weeding out the weak and allowing the strong to thrive.

Thomasson has finished. _“Heil Hitler,”_   he says, and puts up his hand in a salute.

Hux returns it, rote —  _too_ rote, it seems to Ben — and says, quiet, _“Heil Hitler”_ in return. Ben stares at Thomasson as he nods to Hux and then leaves, his gait stiff and formal as if he were on parade. Hux looks back at Ben and goggles his eyes —  _What on Earth was that? —_ and Ben raises his eyebrows in return. “C’mon,” Hux says, and nudges him. They keep walking.

Hux seems to dismiss the encounter that easily, but it leaves a bad taste in Ben’s mouth. _He talked to him like they were friends, or like he wanted them to be. Hux hates him, he always has — just like he hates all the HJs — but what if he didn’t? What if he doesn’t, anymore? Would he pick them over me?_

Things get worse from there. They are required to attend ever more HJ meetings, activity days; at rifle practise, now, it is Ben on Hux’s one side, Ernst Thomasson on the other. And when Ben gets tired or lazy, and lags behind in their laps around the outdoor track, Thomasson picks up his pace and falls into step with Hux; and Hux laughs and pushes ahead of him, and they race the rest of the way, bursting across the finish line one after the other. It’s Ernst who reaches Hux first, to clap him on the back in congratulation; and then Ben comes jogging up with a grin plastered on his face, lays his hand on Hux’s arm and pretends it still belongs there; and sees Ernst glance, cold, at him.

*

Hux is walking Ben home after their meeting one night in early March, both of them in their HJ blacks. They had been talking quietly in the nighttime streets, but Hux’s conversation of late — ever since Thomasson’s unexpected apology — has involved a great deal of (what Ben thinks to be) highly undeserved admiration of Ernst and his prowess in the HJ; and tonight has been no exception. Ben had been growing more and more irritated, offering one-syllable responses, grunts or _hmm_ s when he offered them at all, preferring to be silent than to hear any more of this — and finally Hux took the hint. They walk along, now, in silence.

Ben is well-lost in his own troubled thoughts by the time they reach the steps of his apartment building. “Well, goodnight, then,” Hux says, breaking the longest silence that Ben can ever remember hanging between them; and as Ben replies, “Goodnight,” he looks up, distracted by a noise, and is startled to see Herr Schramm coming out of his building.

Hux looks up, too, seeing the frown on Ben’s face, and when he sees Schramm he asks, “Is that him?” He has never met Schramm, only heard Ben describe him.

Ben nods, and tries to move out of sight, but it is too late; Schramm has seen them.

“Hello,” he calls as he comes down the stairs. “Benjamin — and your friend, too,” Schramm notices, nodding at Hux: “What’s your name, young man?”

“Brandeis Hux,” Hux replies warily. Schramm gives them both a salute, and automatically they return it.

“Benjamin, I wanted to have a word with you,” Schramm tells him, as if it is not strange for him to be leaving the Solbergs’ flat at half-past ten on a weeknight. He glances at Hux in a way that means _without your friend;_ Hux reads his meaning, and takes a half-step back.

“Goodnight, Ben,” he says, reserved and stilted again; and Ben, all at once aching to touch him, to keep him here, nods and returns a quiet “Goodnight, Hux.”

Hux nods to them both, turns on his heel and leaves the street. Ben is alone with Herr Schramm.

At the foot of the steps waits a car: had Ben not been so preoccupied, he is sure he would have recognised it as the Party limousine in which Schramm brought him home from the SA that night. Schramm opens the door and motions Ben inside. He hesitates, but he gets in, knowing he does not have a choice.

Schramm slides into the backseat after him, telling his driver, “We’ll go in a moment.” 

“Very good, sir.”

Schramm removes his black bowler hat. Up close, his white-blond hair is thinning, already receding so sharply from his brow. Ben asks, profoundly uncomfortable, “Where are we going?”

“Oh, nowhere,” Schramm replies. “I just wanted to tell you that the reports on your progress have been very good,” he says. “Your training sits well on you.” He gives a small, false smile; his eyes remain cold.

Ben doesn’t know what to say. He shifts in his seat.

“How do you feel?” Schramm asks him.

Ben fidgets and takes off his cap, realising he should have done so already: Schramm far outranks him. “Fine,” he lies, forcing himself to look unconcerned. “I feel very well.”

As of this month, membership in the HJ is now a legal obligation for boys between the ages of ten and eighteen. Ben is sickeningly glad he had taken Schramm’s “advice” and joined early; it makes it look more like a willing decision.

“I’m most gratified,” Schramm says, apparently sincere. “I knew you would take to it.” He nods, satisfied, and then he is silent a moment, and Ben thinks perhaps they are finished here; but then Schramm says, casual as ever, “Your friend, there. You two seem close,” he comments. “ _Hux —_ I know that name. The doctor’s son, is he?”

The back of Ben’s neck prickles. “Yes,” he answers, more uneasy than ever. “Yes — yes, his father is a doctor,” he stammers out, “and we are close — he is my best friend. We are close,” he repeats stupidly.

“Hux,” Schramm muses. “Brandeis Hux the younger, then?”

“Yes.”

“You spend a lot of time together?” Schramm asks him.

Ben nods helplessly. “We do.”

“And what do you do, when you are together?”

Ben swallows, hard. His throat feels like it’s closing up. He tries to deflect: “Well, sir, we are frequently busy with HJ activities —”

“And when you have time to yourselves?” Schramm interjects innocently. His eyes are so blue and so cold.

Ben feels despair. _He knows. He must know._ “We study,” he answers weakly. “We…listen to music. We take walks around the city, and we talk about — literature,” he manages, “and, and politics — history —”

“Good,” Schramm cuts him off. His lips curve up in an imitation of a smile. “Very good. Fine pursuits for fine young German boys.”

Ben nods, and nods again, head bobbing like a puppet’s on a string. “Yes, sir.”

“Hm.” Schramm nods, too. He looks away: the interrogation, apparently, has come to a close.

_ For now.  _ Ben has the distinct feeling that Schramm has not finished with him — with them. He shivers. “Is that all you wanted to ask me about, Herr Schramm?” he asks, trying to sound bolder, less shaken, than he feels.

“Not quite,” Schramm answers. “I was also thinking of your mother, and how she works so hard, at the factory and raising you and your cousin — Renate, was it?” He doesn’t wait for a reply. “Maybe what you all need is a trip to the country. The Strength Through Joy movement provides these vacations, you know — I could submit an application. What do you think?”

Ben is dumbstruck. He had expected something worse, far worse, and is taken distinctly aback. He gives a nervous laugh, trying to find something to say, and Schramm takes his silence for consent: “Good. I will arrange for it.”

Ben’s brow creases — something here does not feel right; but Schramm is looking at him expectantly, with those cold blue eyes, and once again he knows that he is not being offered a choice, but a command. He nods feebly. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Schramm says. “That’s everything. I wanted to tell you how pleased I am,” he adds. There is something coolly possessive in his tone, something sinister and satisfied. Ben likes it not a bit. “You’re doing well, Benjamin. Very well.”

Ben fidgets. He nods, completely at a loss for words, and then reaches for the door handle, desperate to escape. But Schramm speaks yet again:

“I almost forgot. One more thing.” His voice, like his eyes, is ice-cold. “I think it would be wise if you stopped working for that bookseller. What’s his name?”

“Herr Schummler,” Ben replies before he can stop himself, surprised, one hand still on the door handle. “What has he done?”

Schramm ignores the question. “What do you do for him?”

“I just deliver books,” Ben answers, frowning.

“Doesn’t it seem at all strange to you?” Schramm pries. “Don’t most people come to pick up books for themselves?”

“It’s for old people,” Ben says defensively. “People who can’t go out.”

“How do you know they’re just books?” Schramm presses. His voice has lowered, taken on a dark edge. He fixes his eyes on Ben. “Have you ever opened them?”

Ben is frozen. He opens his mouth to speak, but finds himself mute.

“It’s better to know what you’re agreeing to, Benjamin,” Schramm says, “before you become part of something.”

“It’s just a job,” Ben protests. “We need the money.”

“Of course,” Schramm answers. “However, if you do go back and check, and it turns out that there’s nothing — well, then, you might help to clear him.”

Ben stares at him. _Does he want me to spy for the Nazis?_

Schramm gives a chill little laugh, as if reading Ben’s mind. “Of course, you mustn’t let him know,” he says casually.

Ben looks at him. He feels a pressing sense of danger, a need to get out of this car and away from Herr Schramm. He wishes, not for the first time, that this man had never entered his life.

“I have great hopes for you, Benjamin,” Schramm says. He gives a last dangerous smile, and gestures to the door. “Well, goodnight.”

Ben opens the door, feels the cold night air rush in. “Goodnight,” he says, and leaves the car at once. Through the window, he sees Schramm put his hat back on and tap the driver’s seat. The long, low car pulls out of the street like a panther or its shadow. Ben watches it go, held captive; and when he cannot see it anymore, he turns away and runs up the stairs, desperate for the warmth and light of home.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Sing Sing Sing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_YG9XBX04Y) is an absolute classic; if you've ever heard a swing song in any movie ever, there's about a 99% chance that was it. As usual, I'm on Tumblr [here](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)! Come give me a reason to live as I suffer through my finals. ❤️


	9. Chapter 9

*

The next morning is Saturday. Ben goes to work at Schummler’s shop as usual; but today there is a knot of dread in the pit of his stomach, the disconcerting memory of Schramm’s pointed suggestions. Ben’s tread is heavy, shoulders hunched and hands jammed in his pockets, burdened-down with a pre-emptive and nebulous guilt.

The bell over the door chimes merrily as Ben opens it, and it makes Schummler look up from his work. His face lights up in pleasant surprise on seeing him: “Ah, Benjamin!” he says, looking down to make a note on the page in front of him. “I’ve been wondering about you.”

“Herr Schummler,” Ben greets him, reserved, sure his anxiety — and his conversation with Schramm — are writ bold on his face.

Schummler looks up again, and stops scribbling; he smiles. “Your mother told me that you wouldn’t be coming to me for a few weeks, but I was beginning to think you were never coming back,” he tells him, a kind, paternal chiding in his tone. He sounds genuinely happy to see him again, and it makes Ben feel all the worse.

Ben smiles nervously, scuffing his feet, wetting his lips. “I have time again,” he explains, his words sounding awkward and false.

Schummler seems not to notice. “Really!” he says. He raises his eyebrows. “Don’t they keep you very busy with all those…activities, and competitions?” There is clear distaste in his voice, although his tone is courteous as ever.

Now Ben’s smile is real, albeit embarrassed. He shakes his head: “I don’t always have to go,” he explains, almost apologetically. He shrugs. “And I don’t always go, even if I have to.”

_ Hux, though. Hux still goes to everything. Hux and Ernst.  _ He pushes the unpleasant reminder out of his mind.

Schummler closes the open book in front of him with a soft _thwack._ “Well,” he says, rising from his chair, “I don’t have anything for you today, but when I do —” He nods, turning from Ben to the bookshelves behind him; apparently he is dismissed.

Ben swallows. He’s relieved: no books today means nothing to open and pry through, nothing to find and report. _I don’t want to be an informer._ “Thank you,” he says, and quickly turns to go.

The telephone rings, and Schummler’s voice stops him at the door. “Benjamin?” the old man says. Ben turns, a flash of guilt crossing his face although he has done nothing yet. The phone rings again. Schummler drops a heavy volume onto his desk and then moves briskly to the door to the back room: “Excuse me,” he says over his shoulder. “Will you watch the store for a moment?”

Ben frowns, startled, but he doesn’t have time to reply before Schummler has disappeared into the back. Ben swallows hard and glances at the just-vacated desk: should he sit behind it? But what if any customers come in? Ben doesn’t know how to work the till or fill in the ledger; he’s only a delivery boy. He looks nervously around him and stays put.

From the back, he can hear the telephone still ringing, and then Schummler picking it up. He hears the old man’s deep, authoritative voice: _“Heil Hitler,”_   he greets whomever is on the other line. “Herr Schummler…Yes, very well; how are you?”

Ben glances out the window, praying that no-one will come into the store while Schummler is on the phone. He can hear the old man asking questions, requesting details for an order, no doubt; nothing unusual or suspect. Ben bites his lip. _Would Schramm want to know even so?_

To try and distract himself, to stop himself listening in although he doesn’t want to, Ben wanders over to Schummler’s desk. He rifles idly through scraps of paper, opens the carved lid of a mahogany box and then quickly shuts it when it begins to play tinkling music — he glances to the back, hoping that Schummler hasn’t heard. “Oh, yes, we just got it in this morning,” comes the old man’s voice, apparently undisturbed. Ben relaxes.

He goes around to the back of the desk, where Schummler had been sitting and working. The order-book is open: lines of clients’ names, the books they’ve purchased, their prices and whether they’ve been paid, all listed in Schummler’s tall, narrow handwriting; Ben glances at a page and then looks away, uninterested. He turns to the shelf behind him — one of the rare-books shelves — and his gaze lands on a fat tome bound in dark, purplish leather, propped-up diagonally between a volume by Machiavelli and a slimmer gold-embossed book.

_ Faust,  _ the purplish book’s spine reads, _1 & 2 Teil, _in fine curling gold script. Ben remembers, suddenly, the man who came in one Saturday and inquired after a rare edition of Faust. _It must be this one._ As if compelled to do so, Ben reaches up and takes the book from the shelf.

The front cover and the sides of the pages are a rich, crimson red. The book is light, too light in his hand. Ben frowns, and opens it.

A pile of papers falls to the floor. Inside, the book is hollow.

At once, Ben bends to pick the papers up — and then stops in his tracks. The page on top of the stack is a birth certificate, filled-out by hand in blue ink, in what looks like Schummler’s handwriting. Ben looks through the rest of the pile, and finds more blue-ink birth certificates, filled-out each and every one with a German name, German parents’ names, and a German place of birth…and yet somehow Ben knows they are false. “Forgeries,” he says to himself, the word tasting strange on his tongue.

He closes the cover and stands immobile a moment, clutching it in his hands and staring down at it as if dazed. His heart beats fast. _Schramm knew._

Suddenly he hears Schummler’s voice from the back: “I have my messenger boy here,” he says. “I can send it right over if you’d like.”

Ben shoves the forged papers back inside the false book, his hands made clumsy with panic. He jams the book back on the shelf — but then he looks down, and sees that one paper is still on the floor. He hears the door clattering open, Schummler’s slow tread on the floorboards, and urgently he picks the paper up, takes back the book and hurries to put the errant page in with the rest, but his hands are nervous, he fumbles —

“Benjamin?” Schummler calls for him. Without thinking, Ben shoves the stray page into his jacket pocket and moves away from the shelf, coming back out from behind the desk. Schummler emerges from the back room, innocent and unsuspecting. “You’re in luck,” he tells Ben — and he reaches for _Faust,_ the very same copy. “I have a delivery for you.”

Ben arranges his features into a look of genial surprise, as horribly conscious of the stolen birth certificate as if it were aflame in his pocket. He waits, agonised, for Schummler to wrap up the “book” in brown paper, to note down the address and hand it to him; and then he hurries from the shop, feeling dizzy and guilty with the theft — and with Schramm’s dangerous secret, to which he is now an unwitting party.

Schummler’s door has a prettily-lettered piece of paper tacked to it, reading simply _Juda._ It is new, but Ben hardly takes note of it when he shuts the door behind him, preoccupied as he is. He takes long strides down the busy street, oblivious to the noise and bustle around him, aware only of the false book in his hand (seeming made heavier by the weight of its contents, the explosive risk that they present.) He walks faster, and it is only when he reaches the cross-street that he realises he does not know where he’s going.

He looks down at the piece of paper slipped under the string that ties the parcel together, and he reads the address there. The jolt of recognition almost makes him feel sick.

The address on the slip is Maude Kannenberg’s.

*

Ben has barely rung the buzzer before Frau Kannenberg’s door opens. The tiny woman peers up at him through her gigantic spectacles: she seems to register the worry on his face, and she tuts. “Benjamin Solberg,” she says in that rich, accented voice. “Welcome back.”

Numbly, Ben holds out the wrapped parcel to her; Frau Kannenberg takes it, and then she looks up at him, shaking her head. “You have questions,” she states. It’s like she’s been expecting him.

Ben nods, mute. Maude motions him inside: “Come along, now. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

She closes the door behind him and then putters off to the kitchen, setting the book down on the table. Her head is wrapped in a different colourful scarf than last time’s, and her long housedress hangs loose on her tiny withered body. Ben trails distractedly behind her.

He notices a table on which several framed photographs sit, and lingers to examine them. He sees a small woman, unmistakably a younger Maude, laughing in the arms of a tall, burly, full-bearded man; they are in the next one, too, more solemn-faced on their wedding day, although the hint of a mischievous grin still plays on Maude’s lips. There are other photographs, too: the same tall burly man, standing next to an army lorry with a pith helmet under his arm; a group of people picnicking on the banks of a river somewhere; a formal, posed group portrait in a room decorated for Christmas, the banner in the background reading _Sozialdemokraten von Hamburg, Weinachten 1932 —_

There is a clatter of china, and Frau Kannenberg emerges from the kitchen, carrying a white porcelain teapot. She sets it down on the table and goes back for teacups and saucers. She gestures to the table: “Sit, sit.”

Ben stays where he is. “Who is that?” he asks, pointing to the burly man with the beard. He looks familiar, but Ben cannot place why.

Maude follows his gaze – and once again, she nods sagely, as if she’d been expecting this too. She gives a heavy sigh. “That was my husband,” she announces. She looks at Ben with kindness, almost pity. “Do you recognise him?” she asks gently.

Ben hesitates, and then shakes his head.

“He was a close friend of your father’s,” Maude tells him. “We both were.”

Ben blinks. Hans was notoriously quiet about his political life; he never spoke of friends within the party except those he’d known before the war, Lando and some others who’d fought in France with him. Ben remembers a few instances from his childhood — coming into the kitchen for a glass of milk after his bedtime, seeing his mother and father speaking in low voices, discussing what he now realises must have been party matters, and stopping abruptly when Ben made a noise or called _Mama?_

They never talked politics openly, never with Ben around. He realises that they were trying to protect not just him, but themselves: a chance word in the schoolyard could have changed everything for them, as the years marched on and Ben grew to understand, and, somewhere in Munich, Adolf Hitler made his plans.

They were always so careful; and yet the Gestapo watched them, all the same, and Hans died, all the same.

Slowly, Ben reaches for the Christmas photo, and picks it up as if in a dream. Maude watches him, saying nothing, as he scans the rows of black-and-white faces, taking each one in — and then he sees them.

Maude and her husband; next to him, Leonaldo Christoffersen; and then Lukas Himmel, Lea’s twin; and finally Hans, Ben’s own father.

The five of them are all in a row, standing slightly apart from the rest of the group. Lando, Hans, and Lukas are among the youngest in the photograph, surrounded by older, sterner men; Maude and her husband are among the oldest, but even from the way they all are standing it is clear that they are friends, united by more than their shared party allegiance. Maude and Lando are the only people with dark skin in the photo. He glances again at the banner, at the date —  _1932 —_ and slowly, the pieces fall into place.

“You were part of the plan,” he says, his voice caught and hoarse in his throat. “The plot, in the summer of ‘33 — the assassination. All of you were.”

Maude sits with her hands folded in front of her at the table. Wisps of steam swirl up from her teacup, lending her a Delphic air. She nods, smiling sadly, as if she is sorry for the truth. “Yes, Benjamin. All of us. Your father, your uncle, and my husband and I; and Leonaldo, too.” Her nose wrinkles at his name. She takes a sip of her tea, and her eyes stay fixed on Ben over the rim of her cup.

“You knew my father,” Ben whispers. She told him before, when they first met, but Ben had not realised the staggering weight of it. _She knew him. She fought with him. She was betrayed with him — and she survived._ He looks up, a sudden hatred coursing through him like a shock. He meets her eyes, and she seems to see it, and all she offers is another sad, understanding smile. Ben’s anger dissipates as suddenly as it’d come.

“Yes,” says Maude, “and your mother, too. She is not in the photograph, but she was involved in the party all the same — as much as she could be while still thinking of you, of keeping you from harm’s way. Hans kept her well-informed —  _too_ informed to be safe,” she says, shaking her head. “She knew of our plans. I warned him not to tell her; I knew it was useless. Your mother is a smart woman: smart and loyal and brave. She kept our secrets safe, even when they took her family from her; even when it would have been so much easier just to break, to give in and let them hear what they wanted. Your mother lost so much, Benjamin, but she never betrayed us.”

“I know,” Ben whispers. He sits down in a kitchen chair, the photograph still clutched in his hands. “My father’s memory,” he says. “She would never do anything to tarnish it.”

Maude Kannenberg nods. “A brave woman,” she repeats softly.

“She’s never mentioned you,” Ben blurts, and feels foolish as soon as he says it. _Of course she hasn’t._

“I would not expect her to,” Maude says. “We had always tried to keep our politics separate from our personal lives; and then _after,_ we knew we had to cut off contact entirely — dared not even speak each other’s names. One never knew who might overhear.”

“The Gestapo,” Ben murmurs. “They…they didn’t stop watching us after he died. They must have— suspected — thought that she was a part of it, that she would carry out the plot even after they were gone —” Maude is nodding, confirming his thoughts, serene as ever. But Ben stops in his tracks. “You,” he says. “How did you survive? Did they not come for you, too?” _How are you still alive, when my father had to die?_ screams a voice inside his head.

“They did,” Maude answers. “And I am ashamed to say that I ran.” She lifts one arm, shakes back the sleeve of her dress: “You have seen that I am not a good Aryan,” she says wryly. “The Nazis, they do not like this colour.” She shrugs. “In other countries they are not so barbaric. My husband stayed here, but I went to France, to Paris, at his insistence. I have family there, and they sheltered me for months, until the witch-hunt for our friends had ceased. They had taken your father and uncle by then,” she adds, sounding weary. “I suppose that was enough.”

“What happened to your husband?” Ben asks.

Pain crosses Maude’s face: an old pain, a known pain, like the touch of fingers on a healing bruise. “They took him too,” she says. “They sent him to a work camp in the East. I have not seen him since.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben says quietly, ashamed now for thinking what he did.

“I am sorry also, child,” Maude says. “Sorry that I did not stay with him and fight until the end. I should have preferred one hundred years of labour by his side than those few safe months in France without him. And I am sorry, too,” she says, “that you lost your father, and your mother her brother and husband, all in one fell stroke. Lukas’ daughter — what was her name?”

“Renate,” Ben says. “We call her Rey.”

“I remember. She was so young when he died,” Maude says. “You were both too young to lose them.”

Ben nods. He feels deeply for this fragile old woman —  _albeit not so fragile, it seems, as she appears —_ but at the same time he cannot shake the feeling of injustice, of blame. _She lived and my father died, and yet they were both guilty — she more so, in the Nazis’ eyes, due only to the colour of her skin. How is it that she survived? It isn’t fair. It isn’t right._

“I have to go,” he blurts out suddenly, his guilt and shame and an unbearable sadness overwhelming him. He has the desperate urge to see Hux, to tell him all he’s found out and then to let himself be held, to weep out his sorrows into forgiving arms. He wants to be touched and be loved until he feels safe again — and oh, the cruel irony of this; but then he remembers that things are not as they were, and he feels still more lost, still more alone. He stands up, his chair scraping harshly on the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“Benjamin!” Maude stands too, and grabs his arms with calloused, shockingly strong small fingers; but he shakes off her hand and makes for the door. He is in the hall, the door slamming shut behind him, before she can call him back inside.

And Ben runs, down the corridor and the stairs and out into the street; runs with the cold wind like knives on his face; runs, knowing that no matter how far he goes, he will never run to his father again.

He pelts down the street, around a corner and across a bridge; and halfway across he stops short, all at once desperate to catch his breath. He grips tight to the thick stone railing and stares out at the Elbe without seeing it. Blindly, he fumbles in his pocket and reaches for the stolen birth certificate. He opens it, reads it again as if it will have somehow changed its nature, and then he shreds it in his fingers and casts the scraps into the river.

Ben cradles his head in his hands. He is shaking; his breaths come shallow and unsteady. His chest feels tight, his eyes burn and prick with tears; his head is filled with a roaring, a jumble of thoughts and emotions he does not understand. He sees his father’s face behind his eyes, smells his scent of smoke and motor-oil, and he thinks he will collapse. He has not missed him this much in years.

“Okay, swing boy, you’re dead!”

Suddenly there is an arm around his neck, pulling him into a headlock: Ben cries out and tries to writhe free, shoving his assailant off him with blind fury and fear — but then the attacker laughs, and Ben spins to see his face. It’s Hux, dressed in uniform with a smirk upon his face.

“Did you piss your pants?” he teases, smug.

Ben feels a violent rage surging in his chest. _“Damn it,_ Hux!” he swears, shoving him back with real anger.

Hux’s eyes widen innocently, thinking it’s part of the game: “Hey!” he laughs.

Ben shoves him again. “You can be a real bastard sometimes,” he spits without thinking; and the teasing light in Hux’s eyes goes dark. His grin falls, his lip curling, and too late Ben realises what he’s said.

“It was a joke,” Hux says icily. He takes a step back from Ben, tugging at his leather gloves. “Relax.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Ben says, but the damage has been done. Hux tips his chin up, not believing him. “That wasn’t funny,” Ben adds, abashed but still angry.

“I’m sorry,” Hux says without emotion. Ben says nothing. Hux rolls his eyes, and for a moment it looks like he’s going to walk away. But despite Ben’s mood, this thought is almost unbearable; he makes to say something, but Hux moves first. He steps close again and sets a hand on Ben’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he repeats.

Ben relaxes. “I’m sorry, too.” He attempts a half-smile, knows it is wan and flat. “What are you doing here?”

Hux’s eyes glint. “Oh, I was just riding by,” he says, not noticing Ben’s melancholy. He looks pointedly out at the river; Ben doesn’t say anything. Hux looks back at him, impatient: “Don’t you want to know what I was riding by _on?”_ He grins, and points behind him. “Look.”

Ben turns, and finds an olive-coloured electric bicycle with a shiny bell and a headlight. It’s brand-new, hardly scuffed or even dusty. He frowns. “Where’d you get it?”

“Ernst got me into the motorised HJ,” Hux says with practised casualness. “They just gave it to me. Can you believe that?” He smiles fondly at the bike, and walks over to it. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but it can really fly.” He’s grinning when he turns back to Ben, puffed-up with pride. “Do you want to take a spin?”

Ben glances at the bike, resenting it and all it means. He shakes his head. “No. Not right now,” he says distractedly. He looks out at the river. For all he had craved Hux’s company earlier, now all he wants is to be alone.

Hux notices his silence. He reaches out and touches Ben’s arm: an apology. “It’s been like I said, hasn’t it?” he says, coaxing. “We have it both ways. What could be better?” His face is earnest, wheedling, but Ben cannot agree:

“I don’t know,” he says tiredly.

“There’s nothing to it!” Hux presses. “It’s easy! We just play along, we get whatever we want!” There’s a strain to his words, a fervent belief —  _but who is he convincing, me or himself?_

“I know, Hux!” Ben snaps, finally losing his patience.

Hux’s lips twist. He turns from Ben, rests his elbows on the bridge. Ben stares at him a moment, and then asks, “Did they tell you to talk to me?”

Hux’s head whips back to him. “What?”

“Did they tell you to talk to me?” Ben repeats, insistent, his brow furrowing. He’s suddenly paranoid, feeling watched, hunted. _Not him. Please. Not Hux, too._

Hux frowns, too. “What’s the matter with you?” he asks. “What did you say that for? Are you losing your — what did you say that for?” he repeats, angry now.

Ben says nothing. He shifts, crosses his arms and leans back against the bridge, not looking at Hux.

Hux scoffs. “You’ve been listening to Dietrich too much,” he pronounces disdainfully. His face is the perfect portrait of a scornful prince, a spoilt child. “You know, he looks at everything backwards,” he adds suddenly, with venom. “He’s got it all wrong.”

Ben nods without conviction. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“No, not _maybe. Definitely,”_ says Hux violently. Ben frowns at him. Hux looks away; and then he huffs a sigh, and meets Ben’s eyes. “C’mon,” he says, quieter now, deflated. He gestures to the bike. “Just once around the block.”

“No,” Ben says. “Some other time. Really.”

A strangeness blooms between them, an unfamiliar discord. Hux nods tightly. “All right.” He strides to the bicycle; Ben turns away.

“Hey.”

He looks back. Hux jerks his chin to the water. “Don’t throw yourself in.”

His lips curve up slightly, a peace-offering of a smile. Ben almost breaks, then; almost goes to him and collapses into his arms, desperately lonely, desperately sorry. He will wish, later, that he had swallowed his pride and let himself bend — but now, he does not move. He only smiles half-heartedly back, and then bites his lip and presses his hands to the cold stone of the bridge for an anchor.

Hux mounts the bicycle and speeds away. Ben watches him go. He wants to call after him, but he does not speak.

*

At this week’s meeting they are informing. They have been instructed to spy on their families, their schoolmates, their friends, even on each other, and to bring any whisper of dissent straight back to their leader. Hux is seated at Ernst Thomasson’s side: Ben was late, and sits with boys he doesn’t know, far away from him.

“Herr Keller, the store-owner, is always grousing about the lack of raw materials. He says they’re being used up by the army, and that this is hurting all the small businessmen.”

“Very good, Stahlecker,” nods the Bahnführer, making notes in his book. “Thank you.” Stahlecker, a short blond boy a little younger than Hux and Ben, takes his seat again, looking proud of himself for having had something to report. “Hux?” the Bahnführer asks now.

Hux, in the row in front of Stahlecker, stands up. He tilts his chin up; his voice is smooth, almost careless, as he announces, “I’ve overheard my father, many times, speaking out against the Führer.”

Ben, sitting across the room and staring out the window, suddenly jerks back to attention. He whips his head round and stares at Hux. He, too, has heard Dr Hux’s disparaging remarks about Hitler, but for some reason Ben didn’t believe Hux would actually turn his father in.

“He says he’s a madman,” Hux continues, “dragging the whole country down with him.” His back is straight, his eyes unreadable as he waits for further questions.

_ I was stupid,  _ Ben realises. He remembers Hux’s outburst the other night. _Hux hates his father. Why would he ever protect him?_ But still, a lingering doubt: _I thought he was better than this. Better than them._

“Did he suggest any course of action to remedy this?” the Bahnführer enquires.

Hux shakes his head rapidly. At his side, Ben can see one of his fingers picking away at the skin of his thumb, next to the nail. _So he isn’t as relaxed as he looks._ “No,” Hux answers. “My father’s too weak. He just talks.” His voice is hard, brittle. Ben stares at the table, not wanting to hear this.

“Hmm. Talk can spread,” the Bahnführer muses, making a final note in his book. He looks up again, motioning for Hux to retake his seat. “Solberg?” he calls.

Ben hesitates. He thinks of Schummler, thinks of Dietrich; thinks, for one mad moment, of himself and Hux: an act of self-immolation, throwing them both on the pyre. He stands. And then he shakes his head. “Nothing to report,” he say, in quiet defiance.

From across the room, Hux glances at him, and Ben looks away.

*

The German occupation of Czechoslovakia begins on the fifteenth of March. It’s a Wednesday; Ben is walking home, having just picked Rey up from school, and they come across a throng of people crowded in front of an electronics store. A radio in the window is broadcasting the news.

“Throughout Germany today, there was a feeling of great pride and appreciation for the Führer’s bold action to ensure the safety of our German brothers in the Sudetenland. The Czech army offered no resistance to the overwhelming strength showed by our forces. There have also been numerous reports of spontaneous celebration by the Czech people…”

_ Spontaneous celebration. Spontaneous rebellion, more like,  _ Ben thinks. For some reason — although he has been taught that the territory of the Sudetenland should rightfully belong to Germany, that its inhabitants for the large part are German speakers, of German blood — he cannot imagine the Czech people rejoicing at this invasion of their homeland. He cannot believe that any good army would “offer no resistance” to an invading foreign power, even if that power was their neighbour. None of Ben’s fellow listeners seem to feel this way, however; murmurs of pride rise up from the crowd, and all around him are beaming smiles, satisfied nods.

Ben looks up. On the concrete back wall of a building opposite the electronics store, a massive poster of a smiling German _Mädchen_ has been plastered: blonde braids looped-up on the sides of her head, clear blue eyes shining out at the world. She is dressed in the uniform of the League of German Girls and holding a collection tin. Her teeth are brilliantly white, but her smile is empty, and Ben looks away from it, uneasy.

Rey is fidgeting at his side; she is bored, she doesn’t care. “Ben,” she whispers, “can we go?” The broadcast isn’t over, and shows no sign of ending soon. Ben doesn’t reply. Rey tugs at his sleeve again: “Ben!”

A few heads turn and frown at them; one old woman raises a finger to her lips and shushes Rey. Ben shakes off his cousin’s hand. He wants to go, too — wants to hear no more of this — but he knows that they must stay, just in case. Since the HJs have begun spying on one another, Ben feels eyes at every corner, watching him all the time. And so he shakes his head: “No, Rey. We’ll stay and listen to it all.”

The old woman nods her head. “Good boy,” she whispers to him. “Have pride in your Reich.”

Ben forces a smile, and the woman turns away. Rey sighs loudly and folds her arms across her chest, but listens quietly to the rest of the speech, drawing patterns on the ground with the toe of her boot. When at last it has ended — “It should now be clear to all nations that Germany stands ready to protect members of the German race, no matter across what border they may live!” — the crowd of people, which has swelled to take up and block a large patch of pavement, bursts into applause and cheers. In the general din, Ben takes Rey’s hand and steps away, and walking quickly, they make straight for home.

*

“I don’t like this, Mama,” Ben tells Lea later that night, after Rey has been put to bed and he is helping his mother with the supper dishes in the kitchen.

“What’s that, Ben?” Lea asks distractedly, brushing a curl of hair off her face with one soapy hand. “Hand me that saucepan.”

He does, and then takes up his dishcloth again, drying the plates with unnecessary vigour. “The way things are going these days,” he says. “Czechoslovakia today, and the things they’re having us do at our meetings —” He stops; he hasn’t told her about the spying yet.

Lea frowns. “What are they asking of you?”

“They want us to inform on our neighbours,” Ben says reluctantly. “On everyone, really — anyone who disagrees with the Führer or happens to say or do something out of line. One boy, last week, found out that his neighbours had a Jewish cousin staying with them, and he got the whole family arrested by tipping them off to the Bahnführer. It was…frightening.” He lays down a plate and picks up another, harshly scrubbing it dry.

A hard fear flashes across Lea’s face. “You haven’t said anything?” she asks at once. “About your father, about Lukas?”

Ben gapes: “No!” It’s as if he’s been slapped. The dishcloth goes still in his hand, the plate gripped too tightly. “Mama, you can’t honestly think —”

“Of course not.” Lea looks tired, so tired. She sighs, taking her hands from the dishwater and wrapping her arms around herself as if for protection. “I’m sorry, Ben. I knew you wouldn’t — I trust you. It’s only…I wasn’t thinking. I got scared. I’m sorry,” she says again. She looks up at Ben, and her eyes look old and sad. “This is how it was before, you know. Friends telling on friends, family on family. _God,_ how I had hoped we were finished.”

With determination she turns back to the sink and plunges her hands into the water, searching the depths for whatever remains. She passes Ben the last soup bowl and then drains the sink, taking off her apron and hanging it on the hook, tucking loose pieces of hair back into her bun. Ben dries the bowl and then sits down at the table. “Mama,” he says hesitantly, “that’s not all I’m worried about.”

Lea, straightening the rug by the sink, stands up and looks at him with concern. “What is it?” she asks, coming over to sit across from him at the table. “Have you and Brandeis had a disagreement?” she guesses.

Ben flinches. He hates that his emotions are this easy to see, written all over his face. He nods sheepishly. “Yes,” he murmurs. “Of sorts.”

Lea’s face softens. “What’s happened?”

Ben takes a breath. “He —” he starts, and then breaks off, trying to collect himself. “It’s silly,” he blurts. “I’m being stupid. He’s — he’s made a new friend, in the HJ, and — he’s had less time for me lately. That’s it,” he says. His worries sound even more foolish when he voices them aloud.

Lea levels him with a searching look: _Really?_

“That’s all. Really,” Ben insists. The lie tastes bitter on his tongue.

“No, it isn’t,” Lea says softly. She reaches out, tilts Ben’s chin up and looks him in the eyes. “Ben. Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

To Ben’s shame, he can feel his eyes pricking suddenly with tears. He cannot bear to endanger his mother, _not like this, not with this —_ but at the same time he feels he will be crushed under the weight of this, this sadness he is not allowed to speak of or to name; the pain of losing Hux, without having lost him for true.

“I miss him,” he says quietly. “I never see him anymore. He never _wants_ to see me anymore. He is always with Ernst, now — a boy he used to hate. He goes to every HJ activity. He no longer even pretends not to want to,” Ben continues, his mother’s sympathetic gaze drawing the words from him. “I think — Mama, I think he might be one of them now,” he confesses: the first time he’s dared admit it, even to himself. “I think they have convinced him. It’s no longer about making his father happy. He wants to be one of them.” Ben swallows, his throat tight. “And I can’t follow him there.”

His eyes are blurring. He bows his head, his hands balled-up tight at his sides, and sits immobile, lip trembling as he fights fiercely not to cry. The pain washes over him in waves: waves he has kept back, dammed-up, for so long. The first tears slide down his cheeks.

Lea stands, her chair scraping on the floor. She comes round to Ben’s side of the table and wraps her arms around her son. She rubs his back, strokes his hair, soothes him softly, her voice gentle and sad. “Ben,” she whispers. “My boy, my boy. Hush now. You’re all right. You’re all right.”

Ben lets himself cry. His mother holds him as he sobs.

When at last the waves subside, she lets go of his shoulders and presses a kiss to the crown of his head. “These are trying times,” she says, “and you don’t have to be so strong all on your own. Let me help you. Let me make it better.”

She takes her seat across from him again as Ben pulls out a handkerchief, wipes his dampened cheeks and eyes. How he wishes he could tell her all without putting them both in danger: _I am tired of bearing this weight alone._ He sighs. “Mama,” he says, “I should tell you.”

Lea looks at him. “You love him,” she says. “I know.”

The air feels knocked from Ben’s lungs. He stares at his mother: “What?” he whispers. _She knows, she knows, they will kill her if she knows. I wasn’t supposed to hurt her too. She wasn’t supposed to know._

Lea nods. “I had hoped — I had hoped I was imagining it,” she confesses. “For your own sake; for your own protection. But — I see the way you are with him,” she says. “And the way he is with you. I know you, Ben. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines.”

Ben exhales. He knows he should feel dreadful, for having betrayed Hux without intending to, for having put his mother at risk like this; but all he feels is relief. _She knows, and she is not angry. She will not tell._ “Oh,” he says weakly. “I see. I — I’m sorry.”

“You’re afraid they’ll find out,” Lea guesses correctly. Ben nods, miserable. “Is he afraid, too? Is that why he has been spending less time with you?”

“I think so.”

“Does anyone else know? Your friends? His parents?”

“His father would kill him,” Ben says automatically. “He would kill the both of us.” He shudders. “He’ll never know. Karo — Karo, though; we think she might. If she does, she has said nothing.” _To us, at least._ He hates that he even feels a flicker of fear, the thought that she might have — or might still — betray them: _I would never have thought that, if not for the HJ._ “No one else does. As far as we know.”

“Good.” Lea reaches out a hand and strokes Ben’s cheek with it, her eyes so terribly sad. “Hux won’t tell on you, will he?” she asks, her voice low. “If he’s… _one of them,_ now?”

Ben had not wanted to consider this. It hits him like a physical blow, and he squeezes his eyes tight shut. He shakes his head rapidly, in childish, desperate denial. “He won’t. He can’t.” _Please. Please, don’t let him tell._ “He wouldn’t.”

“I hope you’re right.” Lea sighs heavily. Her gaze lingers on her son a moment longer, and then she stands up. She goes to the kettle and fills it up at the sink, putting water on for tea, asking Ben with raised eyebrows if he’d like a cup; he declines, shaking his head. He stays seated at the table as his mother moves about, listening to the familiar domestic sounds — the kettle whistling softly on the stove, rising to a higher pitch; the clink of mugs and the gentle thud of cupboard doors. Sugar is becoming expensive, and they haven’t much left, but Lea goes to the highest cabinet and takes out the little sugar-bowl, spoons the barest taste into her mug. Ben smiles behind her back at the small comfort; and as he looks around him his heart aches. _If he tells, or if someone finds out — I would lose this, and this, and this. Everything. Everyone._

Lea brews her tea, stirs the sugar in. “Goodnight, Ben,” she says softly, and kisses his head again. The scent of peppermint trails her to her bedroom. The door creaks open and clicks shut; her light blinks on, and a few moments later turns off. Ben stays at the table a while, and then finally rouses himself from his trance.

Rey is asleep in her little bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin. Ben undresses in the dark and climbs into his own bed, the springs squeaking under his weight. As quietly as he can, he shifts to take himself in hand — he has not been touched in so long — and finds release with thoughts of Hux.

He falls asleep missing him.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This past term, I wrote a paper for my European history course on the prosecution of the queer community under the Third Reich, and while researching it I also found out plenty that was helpful for this fic, which I had just finished writing at the time. In the course of my research, I came across [The Men With the Pink Triangle](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/391661.The_Men_with_the_Pink_Triangle) by Heinz Heger, which, aside from its incredible value as a devastating first-person account of life for a gay man in the Nazi concentration camps, also inadvertently lent some historical credence to this scene between Leia and Ben; I had thought I was stretching the boundaries of historical realism with Leia's reaction, but Heger, in fact, had a similarly supportive coming-out conversation with his mother in Vienna in the 1930s, which surprised and cheered me for reasons fic-related and otherwise. I'll give a detailed list of all the books that helped me with the paper and the fic at the end of the last chapter. :)
> 
> As usual, I'm on Tumblr [here](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com). Thank you to everyone who's been reading, commenting on, kudos-ing, and talking to me about this fic. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for racist and anti-Semitic language, as well as mild, non-graphic violence.

*

After his conversation with his mother, Ben cannot take the silence anymore. He needs to see Hux, to speak with him, to ensure he still has his trust…and, if he does not, to determine what he will do to keep himself safe. He hopes beyond hope that things have not gone that far: that he has not lost him so completely.

Tonight their meeting finishes early. There is a Party rally later, and most of the boys have been enlisted to help set up in the square. Those who aren’t to help have been told to go home, prepare themselves, and make sure that their families are ready to attend and show their loyalty to the Reich. Ben’s name is not on the list of those chosen to set up, and as he scans further down, he sees that Hux’s isn’t either: a stroke of luck. He knows this may be his only chance.

He turns around from the board where the list is posted, searching through the milling, talking crowd of boys in the classroom until he sees Hux and Ernst near the back of the room, waiting for their turn at the list. Ernst is picking his teeth with a toothpick, and Hux leans against a desk, looking handsome and bored with his arms crossed over his chest, his green eyes roving lazily. Ben approaches, and Hux’s gaze lands on him. “Ben,” he says, arching his brows. Ernst looks up, glancing at Ben with the hint of a scowl. “What is it?” Hux asks indifferently.

Ben swallows the sadness that threatens to choke him. He can only hope that Hux is feigning, that he’s putting on a show for Ernst’s benefit, because if he isn’t, _if he doesn’t care for me anymore, doesn’t even want to speak to me, then I don’t know what I’ll do._ “Your name’s not on the list,” Ben tells him, forcing himself to sound jovial and unconcerned, as if nothing has changed between them. “Thought I’d spare you the trouble of going up and looking. Oh — yours is, though, Ernst,” he adds, turning to Thomasson with a blithe smile.

Ernst scowls. Ben turns back to Hux. “We have that Latin exam on Monday, and I really don’t think I’m prepared,” he says ruefully. “And since we don’t have to be at the rally for another few hours, I was wondering if you could help me revise?” he asks. “You could come over to mine. Mama made _Pflaumenkuchen_ for Rey’s birthday.” He beseeches Hux with his eyes, praying he’ll understand that this is about more than Latin homework.

For a moment it seems Hux hasn’t understood; he looks ready to dismiss him outright, and Ben’s heart nearly breaks, this rejection the final straw; but then Hux nods, something changing in his eyes. “Sure,” he says casually. “My parents have a dinner tonight anyway. They won’t miss me.”

 _They’ll be missing the rally, though._ This goes unspoken, and Ben hopes that Thomasson, who has moved on to cleaning his nails with his HJ-issued pocketknife, is too thick to understand. Ben catches Hux’s eye and nods. “Shall we, then?”

“Bye, Ernst. See you tonight.” Hux tucks his books under his arm and salutes Ernst quickly, the movement automatic. Ben winces to see it, and Hux seems to notice; he lowers his hand, almost sheepish. Thomasson grunts a farewell, salutes back, and returns to cleaning his nails, beady eyes fixed on his fingers; and Hux and Ben leave the crowded classroom, the leaders shouting and trying to organise the rowdy boys into those who’re helping and those who aren’t.

Outside, Hux’s olive-coloured electric bicycle is padlocked to a post. Ben’s own beat-up bike rests against the wall of the school, too broken-down and dusty for anyone to think about stealing. He dumps his books into the dilapidated wicker basket and gets on, waiting for Hux, and then they take off down the street to Ben’s apartment building, Hux leading the way. He looks splendid in his uniform, even Ben has to admit; his bike glides along, the motor whirring smoothly, and his peaked cap rests precisely atop his pomaded red hair. _If he was only blond_ , Ben thinks, _I couldn’t imagine a more perfect Aryan boy._ The idea makes him unbearably sad.

No one is home at Ben’s house. Today is Rey’s tenth birthday, and she is miserable, for that means she is now obligated to join the BDM: her first meeting is surely going on right now. She sulked and moped this morning, wearing her new uniform to school; Lea said nothing as she straightened her blouse-collar for her, her lips pressed tight together in sad, silent disapproval.

Lea is not home yet, either: the factory has been keeping her later and later, and she comes home so tired in the evenings, the circles under her eyes growing ever darker, never seeming to fade away. Ben has been cooking dinners lately, making careful use of the foodstuffs that seem to grow more expensive by the day. He and Rey eat alone by candlelight, and he puts her to bed before washing the dishes and doing his schoolwork, cleaning the flat as best he can so his mother will have less to do when she gets home. They are managing, just.

Ben wonders, with a brief twinge of jealousy, what it’s like at the Huxes’ manor: surely they are not being careful with their electricity, measuring each pat of butter because they’re not sure they can make it last the week. He imagines Elena mopping the floors and humming folk songs to herself, pictures Dr and Frau Hux dressing up for a night out — but then remembers Hux’s denouncement of his father to the Bahnführer, and wonders if things have changed for their family, too. He resolves to ask, assuming all goes well tonight.

They left their bikes downstairs, and climbed the four flights to Ben’s flat in silence. Now, though, in the Solbergs’ small kitchen — the cake Lea baked last night resting under a cloth on the counter, the plums picked this summer and carefully preserved for just such an occasion — Hux sets down his bag and says, “It’s not really Latin you wanted to talk about, is it?”

His words have an edge that could have been cruel, but Ben looks up from where he’s bent to unpack his books, and sees that Hux is smiling, just slightly. He hasn’t seen that smile for so long. He feels an almost physical relief as he smiles back, chaste and embarrassed:

“No,” Ben admits, taking off his HJ cap and running a hand through his hair, which is already growing back long and unruly. _They’ll make me cut it again soon._ “I just…I wanted to see you,” he says in a rush. “I miss you.”

Hux’s face softens. “I miss you, too,” he says quietly, as if Ernst Thomasson might be listening. He looks down, at his feet in their polished black boots, for a long moment; and then he looks back up at Ben, his face sorry, and in two quick strides he has crossed the kitchen to Ben and he is in his arms, burying his face in Ben’s shoulder.

Ben exhales in surprise, his body thrilled and stunned to _feel_ him again, momentarily forgetting what to do. And then his arms come up, and he holds him tightly, breathing in his scent, feeling his familiar warmth. “Hux,” he says softly, overwhelmed with relief, however temporary it might be.

Hux lifts his head from Ben’s shoulder. “Are we alone?” he asks, low, and Ben nods. “Let’s go to bed,” Hux says.

They still lock Ben’s door, just in case. The bed complains loudly with both their weights upon it. Ben takes his time kissing Hux — his cheeks, his jaw, his neck, his ears, finally his lips, exploring his body all over again, with hunger and wonder as if for the first time. They undress each other slowly, and when Hux reaches down to take them both in hand, they breathe together, each other’s names spilling low from their throats, soft and desperate as midnight prayers. Hux keeps his eyes fixed on Ben as his hand moves, deliberate and slow. They finish together. Ben’s neck arches as he cries out, breaking eye contact at last, but Hux keeps his eyes open as he shudders, his lips parted, exquisite. Ben has never seen anything more lovely.

“I have to go,” Hux says, when the aftershocks have faded and they sink into each other, catching their breath, their skin sheened with sweat. “The rally.” He makes to get up, but Ben catches his hand, holds it, and he stays.

“Wait, Hux. _Ich liebe dich,”_ Ben whispers. He has never said it before, but he knows that now is the right time; that he has been waiting needlessly, and that he may never have the chance again. He swallows, and says it again. “I love you. I won’t let them take you from me.”

“Ben,” Hux exhales. He sinks back onto the pillows. There is pain on his face; he looks older than his years, and tired. “You know they won’t. Not really,” he promises, as he has so many times before — but there is less conviction now, as if he’s starting not to believe it himself.

“They have, though,” Ben protests. “Can’t you see that? You wear their clothes, you take their gifts. You go to all the activities, with _Ernst —_ and you haven’t spoken to Karo or Dietrich in weeks,” he says, the pent-up words pouring out at last. “We still spend time together, the three of us. We want you there, but you don’t have time for us anymore. You don’t have time for _me.”_ He feels a child, and knows he sounds one, but it has been eating him up inside; he needs to let Hux know how he has hurt him.

“Ben.” This time Hux frowns, propping himself up on one arm to look down at Ben at his side. “You know I have to. My father — they’re watching him, he could get in trouble if I step out of line —”

“They’re watching him because of _you!”_ Ben bursts out, anguished, before he can stop himself. “Did you forget that I was there, Hux? I saw you betray him! I saw you tell!”

“I had to!” Hux fires back. “They made us. We had to say _something.”_

“I didn’t,” Ben says. “I’m still here.”

Hux’s face flushes. “It’s different,” he insists. “My father — he’s well-known in the community. It was stupid of him ever to say those things in the first place. He should have known how dangerous it was. He should have known that someone would have told, eventually.”

“But not his own _son,”_ Ben presses. “Please, Hux! If you’ll sell out your own father — who’s next?”

The words fall heavy on both of their ears. Hux winces, and immediately Ben regrets what he’s said —  _I’ve gone too far._ But it’s too late. Hux’s face darkens.

“You don’t understand,” he says, suddenly vicious. “You’ll never understand what it’s like — living in his house, under his rules — he _hates me,_ Ben, I know he does! He resents that I was ever born. I’ve never believed the rumours, about my mother, about his patients — but sometimes I wonder if I should. He doesn’t want me. I don’t think he ever has.”

The flush high on his cheeks spreads, mottling his face an angry, blotchy red. “What does it matter to me if they take him away? I’d be better off without him. I _will_ be. He’ll never hurt me or my mother again.” Hux jerks out his chin, haughty; but the look in his eyes is that of a slapped child, a kicked dog. They glimmer with fierce, angry tears. “I hate him. He’s a traitor, and they’ll do with him what they do with all traitors. I don’t care.”

“You can’t mean that,” Ben breathes. _"A_   _t_ _raitor —_ Hux, do you see — do you know what we are, what they would do to us? Do you remember Ernst Röhm? No one is safe!” His eyes, too, are filling with hot tears. “Have you told?”

“Of course not!” Hux shouts. His eyes are fiery: Ben has never seen him this angry. It reassures him, somehow. “My father is one thing — but _this,_ Ben —” He gestures violently to the two of them. “I would never.”

“For my sake?” Ben bites out. “Or your own?”

Hux is speechless. His lips part, stunned, and he says nothing. Ben’s heart pounds.

“Don’t make me choose,” Hux breathes, finally. “You can’t make me choose, Ben, please. We can have it both ways, I promise, just don’t make me _choose —”_

“It looks to me like you already have,” Ben says quietly.

Hux’s eyes widen. His lips part in a perfect _o_ of surprise. Ben does not waver.

Slowly, Hux gets out of bed. The mattress creaks and dips beneath him. He dresses again, in his HJ blacks, and tugs on his boots standing up. Ben stays in bed and watches him, saying nothing.

Hux opens the door, letting the weak light spill in from outside. With his hand on the doorknob, he looks back, and says impassively, “Goodbye, Ben.”

When he has gone, Ben closes his eyes.

*

One evening a few days later, Ben, still deeply upset by the events with Hux the other night, decides to ignore his self-imposed ban on going out, and accepts Dietrich’s invitation to come see him play at the Café Sperl downtown. His fingers have been healing well, and Ben knows he’s been working diligently to get back to his former dexterity; it seems to have paid off, for Karo knows the cellist of the Sperl’s house band, and he asked for Dietrich specifically when their usual guitarist came down with the flu.

So Ben dresses up in his dancing clothes for the first time in weeks, and he slips out of the house before his mother gets home, reminding Rey sternly, once again, that when Lea inevitably asks, he is studying at Dietrich’s. He walks downtown in the pouring rain, and he cannot shake the _wrongness_ of not turning on to Hux’s street to knock at his door and go the rest of the way with him. _It’s over,_ he reminds himself. _He doesn’t want you anymore._ He sighs. A crack of thunder splits the sky, accompanied quickly by a flash of lightning; Ben runs the remaining half-block to the café, tipping his hat low over his eyes against the downpour.

The café is small, old-fashioned — very different from the rowdy swing clubs Ben is used to — but, so much as it can be, the joint is already jumping by the time he walks in. (Before even the weather, he was delayed by Rey’s insistence on a bribe to keep her quiet, which ended with him doing her math homework for her _and_ relinquishing his piece of buttered bread from dinner.) He sees Dietrich up onstage already, head bent close over his beloved, battered guitar, keeping a lively pace with the three other musicians: they’re playing Django’s _Daphné_.

Ben smiles. In the month since the accident Dietrich has grown even quieter, more reserved, more self-conscious of his crooked spine and his soft, nervous speech, and now his mangled, forever-scarred two fingers, too. But onstage with his guitar in hand, Dietrich is smiling, and it seems to Ben that he is back to himself at last.

“Ben!” Karo, sitting at a table near the front with some people they know from school, has turned around and spotted him. She waves one lovely hand and beckons him, and Ben raises his own in greeting before starting to make his way through the crowd. He spots a small group of Nazi officers — their gold-tipped collars mark them as Luftwaffe — sitting off to the side, up on a dais of sorts behind a silver half-wall. They sip their brandy in silence, nodding distractedly to the beat. One of them eyes Ben when he catches him looking, and Ben quickly turns his gaze away, hurrying the rest of the way to the table.

“Hello, Karo,” he says, sliding into an empty seat and kissing Karoline on the cheek. The others at the table murmur greetings — Helga, Dietrich’s girl, waves shyly at Ben, and Karo’s close friend Ursula, her dark hair pulled severely back from her high brow, gives him a solemn nod. There are two other empty seats at the table: one, presumably, is meant for Dietrich; but the other — “Who else is coming?” Ben starts to ask Karo, but a movement catches his eye and the question becomes unnecessary.

Hux is returning to the table with three coats draped over his arm, his own still buttoned to the chin. He hasn’t noticed Ben; breezy and apologetic, he addresses his words to Karoline and the girls: “The garderobe is full; terribly sorry.”

Ben’s gut clenches. Helga and Ursula have fallen silent, and Karo, too, says nothing. She clears her throat and jerks her head pointedly in Ben’s direction. Hux, confused, glances that way too — and his chipper expression falters.

“Ben,” he says after a moment, his voice noticeably cooler. “I didn’t know you’d be here.” Silently, he hands the coats back to their respective owners, and starts unbuttoning his own in a methodical, deliberate way.

“Neither did I.” Ben wishes he had a drink to reach for, to fill the profoundly awkward silence that has descended over the table. Helga is looking back and forth between them with open, wide-eyed curiosity; Ursula is slightly more subtle, but there’s an unmistakeable flicker of interest in her cold dark eyes. Even Karo knows a little of what’s been going on between Hux and Ben, and she, too, watches with eyebrows raised as the two of them struggle to maintain their composure.

Hux’s coat is all the way unbuttoned, now, and he drapes it over the back of his chair with a slight, perhaps unintentional flourish. He drops his weight into the seat and reaches for the foaming pint of Holsten on the table in front of him. The beer is a new affectation: Hux, Ben knows, prefers wine, and even then only rarely. He’s not wearing his HJ uniform tonight — instead, he’s opted for a brown-green waistcoat over a white collared shirt and a pine-coloured tie; he looks, in fact, staggeringly handsome — but obviously he still feels compelled to keep up appearances, especially with the trio of Nazis sitting so close. But Ben notices the familiar, tell-tale wrinkle of distaste about his lovely mouth as he swallows a generous sip of lager, and it gives him the smallest flicker of hope. He crushes it quickly: _Enough. Don’t torture yourself any further._

“He’s his old self again,” Ben says finally, when the weighty silence has dragged on for far too long. He indicates Dietrich, head bobbing enthusiastically to the beat as he plays, and Helga perks up at once. She’s dressed up tonight, in a modest black frock and a swipe of red lipstick that Ben suspects was Karo’s idea, and she glances at Dietrich with great affection in her eyes:

“Supermurgatroid,” she replies proudly, smiling at Ben and leaning across the table so he can hear her. “But he still can’t play semi-octaves.” The four of them watch as Dietrich goes steaming into a solo, his eyes closing and a tight proud smile stretching across his face as he works his fingers up and down the frets. Ben can feel Hux staring extra-intently, as if to make up for his prior cruelty to Dietrich and his weeks of silence since.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ben sees movements at the Nazis’ table: one of them, his hair strikingly yellow and cut army-short, has beckoned over the maître d’ and is requesting something of him, fishing in his pockets for a handful of marks. The maître d’, a stuffy-looking man with hair the colour of a stoat’s fur in summer, nods and accepts the money, and goes with it over to the side of the stage. The band plays their final chord — Dietrich striking it with particular exuberance — and the smoky café applauds for them. “Smooth!” Ben calls to him, meaning it; Dietrich catches his eye, and gives him a very pleased grin.

Hux, though, has turned his attention elsewhere: to the Luftwaffe men’s table. “Hey, flyboys!” he shouts to them over the last of the applause. The yellow-haired one and his companions — one dark-haired and passably handsome, the other possessed of a particularly large forehead and resolutely unsmiling, perhaps because of this — look over at him. “Have any dogfights yet?” Hux asks them eagerly.

The blond Nazi gives a slight, patronising laugh and says confidently, in the manner of an adult addressing a precocious child, “No; but we’ll get our chance soon enough.”

He turns back to his friends and says something that makes them laugh; and Hux, too, turns back to their own table and says ardently, his earlier coldness forgotten, “Can you imagine that? Being up there, flying around?”

He leans in and takes another gulp of beer, and by the brightness in his eyes and the flush on his cheeks Ben realises he’s getting drunk. He drains his pint and signals to the waiter for another, as Helga giggles and says, “I’d get dizzy!” The girls launch into a discussion of what it must be _like,_ up there, so high in the air, “and with enemy planes on your tail, oh, how _dreadful_ it would be, to know you could be sent spiralling out of the sky at any moment…”

Ben glances back over at the stage, and sees the maître d’ now talking to the band. He hands Dietrich the handful of marks, and a slip of paper which must also have come from the yellow-haired man; Dietrich frowns, and shakes his head. The maître d’ seems to press him, to try and negotiate something, but Dietrich does not look happy to give in.

“Ben,” comes Hux’s voice suddenly, made loose and light by drink. Ben doesn’t look over, still distracted. “What about it?” Hux presses, putting his elbows on the table near Ben, edging into his space. He flicks a lock of red hair out of his eyes, entreating, insistent, trying to act like nothing’s changed; but Ben doesn’t give in.

“Wait a minute,” he says coolly, his eyes still fixed on the stage.

The noise has died down sufficiently, and they are sitting close enough, for Ben to hear Dietrich’s response to what must have been the maître d’s repeated request: “Tell them,” he says firmly, “we play what we want to play; and if he doesn’t like it, he can go somewhere else.” With determination, Dietrich pushes the note and the money back into the older man’s hand. But the matter is not resolved so easily as that.

 _“You’ll_ go someplace else after tonight, but right now I am _paying you,_ and you will play what I say!” the maître d’ shouts, shoving the marks and the paper back at Dietrich.

“Dietrich, let’s just play the song,” says the cellist, Karo’s friend, clearly anxious to diffuse the tension. “Think of the band!”

The little scene has caught the Nazis’ eye: the yellow-haired man is watching with smug, hawkish amusement. Dietrich notices, and locks eyes with him; and with a bravery that Ben has never seen from his quiet, timid friend, he crushes the money in his hand, eyes fixed on the Nazi all the while. With as much defiance as he can muster — his movements restricted by his back brace — Dietrich stands, and takes up his guitar. “I don’t play for money,” he tells the maître d’ resolutely; and then he leaves the stage.

“That’s good,” the man calls after him, “because I’ll see to it you never play in any clubs again!”

By now, some of the café has seen what’s going on; the hum of chatter has died down a little, and several heads turn to watch as Dietrich makes his way over to his friends’ table, his guitar clutched tight in his hand like a weapon or a shield. And finally the yellow-haired man speaks up.

“Hey! What’s the matter with you?” he calls after Dietrich, his voice edged with slightly exaggerated concern. “We liked your music,” he says when Dietrich turns to face him, eyes widening in apparent earnest. “We only wanted to hear one good German song.”

Dietrich pauses only a second before he makes his reply. “There are no more German songs,” he says with uncharacteristic bitterness. “Only _Nazi_ songs.”

Helga springs up from her seat and is at his side in an instant. “Let’s just go, Dietrich, come on —”

“Wait a second,” comes a new voice from the soldiers’ table. The dark-haired man has stood up, and his face, in anger, reveals itself to be much less handsome than it previously seemed. He steps close to the half-wall separating their table from the main floor, and Dietrich steps up to meet him.

“You want to hear a song for the _Fatherland?”_   he says, his voice trembling with anger. He picks up his guitar and offers it to the Nazi, who only sneers at him. “Play it yourself.”

The Nazi looks down at the guitar, and then back up at Dietrich, that ugly smirk still on his face. Dietrich brandishes the instrument: “Take it.” The Nazi does not move. A flash of hot anger crosses Dietrich’s face, and now he shoves the guitar at him —  _“Take it!”_ he shouts, loud enough that the few patrons whose eyes were not already on the unfolding scene are startled into silence, a wave of heads whipping in the direction of the sound.

With a cautious look at Dietrich — a careful patronisation, such as might be employed when dealing with someone drunk or unstable — the brown-haired Nazi takes the guitar, his face impassive. Dietrich, wild now, manic, turns to the café at large. “What’s the matter with all of you?” he asks, speaking too quickly, gaze darting around like an anguished bird to land, accusing, on the silent guests. His hands work nervously at his sides, his poor scarred fingers curling and uncurling as he speaks, sounding on the verge of tears. “Can’t you see what’s happening?” he beseeches desperately. “Are you afraid to _look?”_

At their table, his friends sit still as statues. Hux’s gaze is fixed on the table in front of him, the dregs of his beer. Helga is still hovering next to him, frozen, seeming frightened to touch him, as if to wake a sleepwalker. Karo bites her lip. Ursula’s face is like stone. Ben is the only one who will look at Dietrich, and when he does, he finds he does not recognise him. This new man is bitter, is angry and sad — and, Ben realises with a jolt, is not so new at all. This Dietrich has been manifesting all along, right under their eyes; it is only that Ben, and all the others, have not noticed — have not cared to see.

Dietrich fidgets, now, as if bursting out of his skin — and then suddenly he moves, with stunning speed and agility, taking long strides across the café, appealing to the crowd as he goes. “We are _murdering Austrians,”_ he cries, making his way between the tables with fearful determination.  “Next it’ll be the Czechs, and then the Poles — not to mention the gypsies, the Jews!” he shouts, his voice and face wrought with distress. “It’s _unmentionable!”_

He pauses; he is breathing hard, the usual pallor of his skin changing to heightened, anxious colour. His round face is damp, locks of dark hair falling limp in his bespectacled eyes. “Do you think that, just because you’re not doing it yourself, you’re not a part of it?” he continues, still wending unsteadily between the tables. “Well, I’m _sick and tired_ of doing my part!”

His painful circuit of the room has brought him back to the brown-haired soldier. He stops in front of him, inches from his face, and says, “And now _you_ want to hear a _song.”_ He spits the word as if it were something filthy, criminal, and then he whirls to face the café again, eyes blazing. “You want something to _lift your morale!_ Well I _won’t!”_ he shouts harshly. His manic eyes seek, beseech, searching for sympathy in the shell-shocked crowd. His mouth trembles. “I won’t,” Dietrich repeats, softer now, and he sounds a boy again, sounds frightened and sad.

Ben swallows. He can see Helga about to cry. There is a moment of awful stillness, absolute limbo — and then Dietrich takes a sudden step and stalks out of the café as fast as he can manage. The movement is jarring: Karo gives a start at the disturbance, and then it’s like the spell is broken. Murmuring starts up at once around them.

Hux gives a minute shake of his head and runs his fingers through his hair. He takes a drag from a cigarette Ben hadn’t seen him light: it’s half-burnt already, ashes plummeting from its tip. Hux’s hand shakes as he lifts it to his lips.

“Madness,” he says quietly. Ben looks at him. Hux looks up. “He was making a scene,” he says, almost apologetic, but the tone of his voice wills Ben to agree, suggests so persuasively that he is in the right and it won’t do to disagree. He crooks a half-smile at Ben, conspiratorial: _What to do?_

Ben is filled with disgust. Without a glance back at Hux, he stands up and goes after Dietrich.

*

“Herr Hit-Man,” Ben cries, shrugging on his jacket as he races out the café’s doors and jogs down the street towards Dietrich’s stubbornly retreating figure, his step stiff and dogged with the limp. He doesn’t stop when he hears Ben’s voice. “Django-Man!” Ben calls again, running to catch up.

At this Dietrich turns. His face is distorted with anger, his eyes crinkling as if to hold back tears. _“Dietrich!”_ he cries. “My name is Dietrich.”

There are pattering footsteps behind them: Karo and Helga come running, Karo reaching them first. Helga lugs the guitar case with both arms wrapped around it, her lower lip trembling. She comes to stand close to Dietrich, but he ignores her. “How could I have been such an idiot?” he asks angrily of them.

“What do you mean?” Helga asks with a note of desperation. “You’ve been practising for tonight for weeks!”

“They only wanted to hear one song,” Ben reminds him, hoping to pacify him. Distantly he is aware that Hux has not joined them. He pushes his own bitter anger, resentment, grief — whatever this is, whatever he feels — aside, and listens as Dietrich turns to him, his face alight with fury.

“It’s not just _one song,_ or _that song —_ don’t you see?!” Dietrich demands. His brow is deeply creased, and he gestures helplessly in the air, trying to make them understand. “Any time you go along with them, any time you try to help them, it just makes it easier!”

Ben stares at him. They are all silent, unsure what to say, what to do in the face of this blistering truth — and then the silence is shattered.

“Dietrich!” Hux shouts from behind them. In a few long, angry strides he has reached the cluster of them on the pavement, his face flushed and his eyes like thunder. Ben moves aside to let him into their huddled circle, but he does not look at him. “What the _hell’s_ the matter with you?” Hux demands, stepping closer to Dietrich, threatening. _“The Jews and the gypsies?”_   he quotes, disgusted. “What about the cripples and the retards? You know, that’s who you belong with,” he spits.

Dietrich lifts his head to look at him, and they lock eyes. A deadly tension stretches between them — Helga has started to cry, and her muffled sobs are the only sound in the cold night air — and then Dietrich says, deliberate, final, “I would rather belong to anyone —  _anyone!  —_  than to the _Nazis_ like you do.”

Hux’s eyes gleam cold. “That’s because you’ve got everything backwards,” he retorts, deadly calm. “Nazis go _anywhere_ they want, do _anything_ they please, and _everybody_ gets out of our way.”

 _Our way._ Ben feels his gut pierced, his heart sinking like a dropped stone. _He is lost. I have lost him now._

“If I were you,” Hux tells Dietrich — final, clinical, cutting right to the quick — “I wouldn’t worry about anybody but myself; because we’re coming after you next.”

Ben closes his eyes. _I don’t know him anymore._ Karo is at his side: she presses her hand to his arm as if she knows, as if she feels for him. Ben glances at her, and he knows his eyes are bleak, are full of blank despair.

Dietrich looks at Hux for a long, long time. Hux stares back, defiant. Finally, Dietrich speaks, quieter than he had been. “Quiz time,” he says, and there is a resigned hardness in his voice. _“Got your glasses on.”_

Ben recognises the reference, from the _Hepster’s Dictionary._ Hux made more a show of learning all the lingo, but Dietrich always knew it best. Ben knows what he’s to say before he says it, but Hux does not:

“What?” he asks bluntly.

“It means you know who your friends are,” Dietrich says.

His hat is in his hand. He puts it on, now, still looking at Hux, and then reaches out to take the guitar from the miserable Helga, whose face is wet with silent tears. He shoulders his burden stiffly and turns from them without another word. Helga glances at them, swiping quickly at her eyes, and then follows him away.

Ben takes a few steps as if to go after them, but then he stops, staring at their retreating backs. Behind him, Karo folds her arms and exhales, sounding exhausted.

“I can’t believe I used to feel sorry for that traitor,” Hux says.

Ben turns around. “What the hell’s gotten into you?” he demands.

Hux’s hands are jammed in his pockets, he looks arrogant and unfazed. “What’s gotten into _me?”_ he repeats, eyebrows raised.

“Yes, _you!”_ Ben retorts. His forehead creases in anguish: he is unable to reconcile the Hux he knows — the Hux he loves _—_  with this cruel, callous man, who defends the Nazis so easily, who spouts their poisonous rhetoric without a second thought. “What the hell was that all about?” he demands, his voice rising in pitch and volume as he gestures to where Dietrich and Helga just were. “I can’t believe that was you — those _things_ you were saying!” he presses, growing more and more upset.

“The things _I_ was saying!” Hux repeats, insulted.

Ben steps closer to him, furious, desperate. “You don’t really believe all that propaganda, do you?” he asks.

“Ben, _he’s_ the one who’s got his head full of propaganda,” Hux insists immediately. His eyes search Ben’s face, willing him to be convinced. “Didn’t you hear him? He was actually _defending the Jews.”_

At this Ben is struck dumb. His chest heaves as he tries to formulate an answer, to appeal to _Hux_ beneath this cold façade the Nazis have poured over him like a gilt veneer. “But Benny Goodman is Jewish,” is what he finally comes out with, helpless and pleading.

Hux pauses. “Yeah,” he says, hesitating, and for a moment Ben thinks he has got through to him, but then Hux finds a counterpoint and springs to it: “And see what that music’s done to Dietrich? It’s perverted his brain! Look at him!”

 _“What?”_ Ben demands, shocked. He shakes his head, again and again, as if to wake from a bad dream, to find the old Hux in front of him again. His throat tightens, and he swallows hard to keep from crying. “I can’t believe this,” he says, his voice bleak. “Dietrich’s right about you.”

“You always take his side,” Hux says angrily.

“I’m not taking his side —”

“You _always_ take his side, whether he’s right or wrong!” Hux shouts.

“I’m not taking his side!” Ben cries, as Hux shouts over him, again, _“You’re taking his side!”_

“Well, he _is_ right!” Ben yells. His brows are drawn far down over his eyes; he is near trembling with grief and rage. Hux stops. “Listen to yourself,” Ben implores him, unable to keep the raw emotion from his voice. “You’re turning into a Nazi.”

“Oh, so _what_ if I am?” Hux explodes, clenching his fists.

Ben only stares at him. For a moment Hux is silent, seething; and then, with terrible mockery, deliberate and cruel, he says slowly, “Oh, that’s right — I’m sorry, I forgot.” He pauses, and his eyes flick over Ben’s face with such contempt. _“You’re_ a degenerate, too.”

Ben hits him.

Immediately, Hux pushes him back, his lip curling. Ben, blind, not thinking, grabs him by the lapels and shoves him up against the wooden door of a closed shop on the street. Karo shouts —  _“Ben!_ What are you doing?” — and grabs at him, but Ben is too strong. He shakes her off, hands fisted in Hux’s coat, and pins him there against the wall, his feet not touching the ground.

Hux is red-faced and sputtering, his face twisted in rage: “Get your hands off me!” he grits out through his teeth. Ben doesn’t relent.

“Enough!” Karo shouts. _“Stop it,_ come on — you’ll make a scene – let’s _go!”_ She tries to claw Ben off of Hux, and fails. Hux struggles against his grip; he lashes out at Ben, and they tussle, and finally Hux breaks free and Karo succeeds in yanking Ben backwards, with a cry of resistance from him.

Separated, he and Hux stare at each other, both breathing hard. Ben swallows, catches his breath, and still their eyes are locked, both of them disbelieving, feeling their friendship fracturing around them. Ben’s chest aches: for a moment he thinks he will collapse.

Hux seems about to say something. He gives Ben one long, last, awful look, and then he turns his back on him.

He walks away slowly, headed around the corner. If Ben shouted for him, he thinks, he might still turn around. He says nothing.

“Ben.”

Ben wheels. He’d nearly forgotten Karoline was here; but there she stands, arms folded, her face like the sky before a storm. She looks at him, and shakes her head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, although he is not the one at fault, and both of them know it. “I’m — so sorry.”

Karo gives a small, sad exhalation. She goes to him, picking over the uneven cobbles in her high-heeled dancing shoes, and tucks her hand under his arm. They walk home in silence.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ernst Röhm was an openly gay, high-ranking Nazi who, along with his inner circle — several of whom were also gay — was arrested and murdered as part of the "Night of the Long Knives" in June 1934. Röhm's homosexuality wasn't the official reason for this purge, but Hitler, formerly his close friend, was certainly aware of it, and his decisive action against Röhm helped to cement his position as the moral leader of the party, refusing to tolerate "degeneracy" within its ranks. The years that followed would see increasing Nazi crackdowns on sexual "deviance", eventually creating the paranoid climate of Pink Lists, denouncements, and the distant threat of concentration camps in which Ben and Hux are now living.
> 
> The song Dietrich's playing at the cafe is [Daphné](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sPfyx5t_5A) by Django Reinhardt.
> 
> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com). Thank you, as ever, for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, and talking to me about these poor boys. :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for suicide (off-screen but discussed), minor character death, and Nazi rhetoric. Read carefully, please.

*

A week passes. At school, Ben and Hux don’t speak. Ben sees him in the hallway, leaning up against the lockers with his books held to his chest: holding court at the centre of a tight circle of HJs, all of their eyes fixed hungrily on his face as he makes some joke, tells some dry anecdote in that refined, arrogant drawl of his. He reaches up to brush a lock of hair out his face, and Ben, passing, meets his eyes for a moment; and then Hux looks away, jerks his chin in Ben’s direction and makes a remark that Ben can’t hear, and his cronies burst into laughter.

Ben walks on quickly, after that.

When Rey and Ben get home from school that day, the last Tuesday of March, the apartment door is ajar. Ben breaks off their conversation with a frown, put instantly on edge, and strides quickly to the door. Rey follows close behind: Ben knows they are both fearing to find Herr Schramm inside their flat.

And indeed, when they come in, they can hear two voices coming from the kitchen — but both are female, and they sound upset.

Ben’s frown deepens, and he hurries into the kitchen, not bothering to take off his coat. “Mama?” he calls. “What’s wrong? Who’s there?”

But it’s not Lea who comes out of the kitchen first — it’s Karo, and her eyes are puffy with crying. Ben is jarred by the sight: Karoline is tough as nails, stronger than most boys. He has never seen her cry before.

“Karo? What are you doing here? What’s going on?” Alarmed, Ben hurries to her side. Lea emerges from behind her, a hand pressed to her mouth: without even knowing what’s going on, Rey runs to her, wraps her arms around her waist.

Karo looks at Ben, her blue eyes spilling tears. “It’s Dietrich,” she whispers. “He’s gone.”

At once Ben stumbles. Karo catches his arm, leads him to the kitchen and guides him into a chair. Rey has begun to sob, and Lea is comforting her, smoothing her hair over and over and whispering, “Shh, shh, it’s all right, it’s all right.”

Ben puts his face in his hands and closes his eyes, trying to make sense of the news. After a moment he lifts his head, and turns to Karo, and asks bleakly, “What happened?”

“He…he slit his wrists in the bath,” she whispers, choking out the words. Her face is pale, her eyes so wide and scared. “Last night. His mother found him this morning, when he didn’t get up for school.” She swallows, takes a gulp of air, and then forces out, “She said — there was a record broken next to the tub — one of Benny’s, his favourite.” A sob escapes her throat. “He used a piece of it. It was all covered in blood.”

At this final detail she breaks. She collapses into the chair next to Ben, crying openly, and now Lea comes over and rubs her back too, Rey still clinging to her legs. The three of them support each other in their grief and Ben sits alone, staring into nothing and trying to absorb the horror of what he’s just heard.

_ It was the Nazis,  _ he thinks numbly; _they did this. Even if Dietrich opened his own veins in the bath, even if he was the one to stop his own heart beating — it was the Nazis. Hitler, and the HJs, and all of their vile ideas — and Hux. Hux had a part in this._

He stands. His chair scrapes back on the floor, and his mother and Karo and Rey look up, their faces streaked with tears. “I have to go,” Ben tells them, his voice choked-off and strange. “Hux. I need to tell him.”

“Ben —” Lea starts.

“Mama, I have to. He — he needs to know.” He is still wearing his hat, his coat. He goes to the door, his legs numb under him, and down into the street. He is disoriented for only a moment, but his feet know the way to Hux’s. He goes.

*

Ben pounds on the door when he arrives. He’s breathing hard; his chest hurts from the running, and from the strange tightness that has constricted his ribs since Karo’s first words to him tonight. He stands unsteady on the doorstep, and when Elena does not come to answer right away, he knocks again, and again, and again.

Finally the door is wrenched open. It’s not Elena, though — it’s Hux, in uniform, his face arranged into a mask of politeness that disappears as soon as he sees who it is. “I should’ve known it was you,” he says rudely. “Pounding on the door like a savage.” Behind him, through the doorway, Ben can see lights on in the parlour; laughing adult voices, the gentle sounds of piano music float out from inside. “You’re interrupting Mother’s dinner party,” Hux informs him irritably. “Why are you here?”

“Hux,” Ben says, and then stops — Claudia Hux has appeared behind her son, a champagne flute in her hand and a look of mild interest on her face. “Hello, Frau Hux,” Ben greets her wearily. _No, no. Please._ “I’m sorry to have disturbed your party.”

“It’s nothing, Benjamin,” Hux’s mother assures him, her face lighting up in that distant radiant way she has. “Won’t you come in?”

“Ben can’t stay,” Hux interrupts her. “He just came over to ask me about some homework. He’ll be leaving straightaway.”

Claudia’s face falls prettily. “Shame,” she says, touching her coiffed blonde hair with distraction. “We never see you anymore, Benjamin, dear!”

“Apologies, Frau Hux, but Brandeis is right; I do have to be going soon,” Ben says. He is agitated, exhausted, feeling near-sick with the news he has come to deliver. _News, or is it blame?_ Already he can feel his reckless frenzy fading, being steadily replaced by a crushing grief — and too an anger. _Leave me alone with him. He needs to know._ “Enjoy your evening.”

_ “Danke schön!”   _ With a last affectionate smile (not quite reaching her eyes), Frau Hux floats off to rejoin her party. Ben can hear her high laugh tinkling above the din.

“What do you want?” Hux asks him bluntly as soon as his mother is out of earshot.

“It’s Dietrich,” Ben says. Hux frowns: _What about him?_   Ben takes a deep breath. “He — he killed himself last night. Karo told me.”

Hux’s eyes widen as if he’s been slapped. _“What?”_

“He slit his wrists,” Ben whispers, the words acrid and painful in his throat. “He’s dead, Hux. He’s gone.”

Hux puts one hand on the doorframe and closes his eyes, squeezes them, his eyelids fluttering. “No. _No,”_   he says, suddenly angry, and opens his eyes again. “Ben — if you’re kidding around — if you’re trying to make me feel _guilty —”_

Silently, Ben shakes his head.

Hux stares at him, not understanding, or not wanting to, his free hand clenching white-knuckled at his side.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Ben whispers, after the silence has stretched out for far too long between them, the party still carrying merrily on in the background. “Won’t you — apologise?”

Anger flashes hot across Hux’s face. “So you _do_ think it’s my fault,” he spits. _“I didn’t kill him, Ben!_ He killed himself! He cut his own damned wrists and he let himself die. He was a cripple and a traitor, he was useless, he always had to make a _fuss —”_

“Are you saying this was for the best?” Ben cuts him off. “Is he better off dead, Hux? He was your _friend!”_

“That’s not what I’m saying!” Hux cries.

“That’s what it sounds like to me.” Ben’s voice is cold.

“He was a traitor,” Hux repeats. His voice wavers. “He — he never would’ve made anything of himself anyway.” He takes a deep breath, seeming to steady himself, and when he speaks again after a moment, he is calmer. “Listen, Ben,” he says, and his voice is different now: too adult, too smooth, as if he were reading from a script. “This — it’s shaken you up. It’s awful, none of us could’ve seen it coming…but Ben, you’ve got to forget about it.”

Ben feels like he’s been punched. For a moment he is nearly speechless. He clenches his hands at his sides. _“Forget about it,”_ he repeats, his voice thick. He stares at Hux in complete incomprehension.

But Hux remains unfazed. “Yeah,” he says softly, keeping his eyes on Ben’s, as if he were a wild thing to tame. “You’ve got to. He’s just one person.”

“He was our friend!” Ben cries. He blinks, fast, his vision suddenly blurring.

“It doesn’t matter,” Hux says. He looks at him, his eyes sympathetic, pitying.

Ben closes his eyes, for he cannot stand that look; he does not want his pity. _This isn’t him. This can’t be him._

“Ben, you can’t save everybody,” Hux reminds him, when Ben is silent. “There are more important things now. Anytime, we could be at war!”

Ben’s eyes snap open. They are wet. “If you side with the Nazis, then _we’re_ at war,” he says bitterly, unable to hold himself back any longer. “You and me, Hux. I’m not going to _forget_ about Dietrich. They _murdered_ him!” he shouts. “They murdered my father! My uncle!”

Hux raises his hands in a useless pacifying gesture. “Wait a second!” he entreats him. “What are you talking about?” he asks, his voice edged with patient disbelief. “Dietrich killed _himself,”_   he reminds him. “He was a cripple. He didn’t belong.”

At this Ben breaks. “What’s happened to you?” he shouts, and his face is hot, his eyes leak tears. “He was a _cripple?_ He killed himself because he didn’t want to become a _murderer!_ Don’t you see that’s what they’re trying to turn us into?”

_ “Stop, Ben!   _ Stop talking this way!” Hux cries over him. He gestures violently in the air, as if to bat the words away. “Just _stop it,”_ he repeats helplessly. “You need to go along, and make the best of things.”

“They want us to spy on our own parents!” Ben yells. “Don’t you understand? God knows what else they’ll do!”

“Ben, we’re not in charge,” Hux says, and his voice is low again, suddenly composed. He glances over his shoulder, to the lights and music of the party; their shouting has not yet disturbed them, but soon enough, it might. “We can’t know what’s really going on.”

Ben will not be placated. _I don’t care if I make a scene._ He steps closer to him, right up to his face: they are close enough to kiss, he thinks distantly. “They’re _evil,_ Hux!”

_ “Shut up!”   _ Hux shouts at him, childish, his face contorting. “I’m not hearing this,” he cries. “You don’t know what you’re saying!” He points a finger at Ben, jabbing it in his face: “Do you want me to report —” he begins, and then all at once he breaks off, frozen. His lips part as he realises what he’s said.

Ben only stares at him, an awful kind of triumph boiling in his chest, for at last he understands. Hux makes a soft, strangled sound, as if about to cry, and then slowly he lowers his hand, and he only stares at Ben, looking betrayed and lost. He moves suddenly, and even here, even _now,_ Ben thinks for one wild moment that he will make to kiss him — but he is only grabbing for the door, closing it halfway, pushing Ben back from him and putting a shield between them. 

“Go,” Hux says, and his voice is weak.

Ben steps off the threshold, but he does not turn to go. They stare at one another for a moment, a tenuous, suspended moment in which it feels, ever so briefly, like things might change after all. _Come back,_ Ben wants desperately to plead with him. _Come back, come back to me. I said I loved you, and I still do. Not even they can change that._

But at last the spell is broken. “Just go along,” are Hux’s parting words to him. “Just make the best of things.” He disappears behind the heavy door. Its closing slam has never sounded so final.

*

Helga sobs between Karo and Ben at the funeral, days later. Hux does not attend.

Dietrich’s parents stand across from his friends. His mother is white-faced, swaying on her feet as her husband supports her, Dietrich’s younger sister staring blankly at the ground. They look lost, all three of them, set adrift without him. Ben stares at the mound of earth piled on Dietrich’s grave as the pastor, his voice dignified but trembling, intones the words of the service: _“Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over…”_

They part ways, after. Karo takes Helga’s arm and brings her over to Dietrich’s family; Frau Meissner takes one look at her and Helga collapses into her embrace. Dietrich’s mother closes her eyes, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Ben raises a solemn hand to Karo and makes to leave on his own. The sun is coming out — it rained this morning — and he’s too hot in his dark funeral jacket. Spring is coming and Dietrich will not see it.

At the entrance to the cemetery, a lone figure steps into Ben’s view. He looks up, lost in melancholy, and stops in his tracks.

Hux holds his uniform cap in his hands, turning it around in his fingers. His prized electric bike is by his side.

Ben frowns. Hux says nothing, just locks his eyes on Ben’s. His brows are slightly raised; he is waiting for forgiveness, for a sign.

Ben turns on him and walks away.

*

“So, I send out my driver — admittedly a mistake — and he brings back French sausage, Polish wine, and Greek chocolate!” Herr Schramm laughs at his own affectedly pithy remark.

It is a Saturday night, the week after the funeral, and to Ben’s horror, Schramm telephoned last night and invited himself over for supper. Lea has been in a frenzy all day, scraping together loose change, sending Ben out to the market practically at sunrise and cooking all day from the moment he returned with a meagre supply of meat and cheese and extra butter. But tonight she looks lovely, her thick brown hair curled around her face, wearing lipstick and a floral dress that Ben hasn’t seen since his father died; all her earlier agitation is gone. Ben knows she’s putting on the best possible show for Schramm, letting him see that they are doing fine without his “help”.

Lea gives a little laugh at Schramm’s comment. “The delicate matters, you must always attend to yourself,” Schramm says conspiratorially to her, grinning as he takes a mouthful of sausage and potatoes. He is disconcertingly genial tonight, gracious to Lea, avuncular to the children —  but Ben and Rey are having a more difficult time being on their best behaviour. 

Dressed-up and uncomfortable in his khaki HJ uniform, Ben bends over his own plate and wills Schramm not to address him. Rey, across the table from him, is glancing at Schramm with outright distaste, and Ben kicks her under the table, shooting her a warning look. Rey scowls at him and then rearranges her pert features into a somewhat less hostile expression.

“It’s not often that I get to share the hospitality of such charming company,” Schramm comments, drinking deep of his wine — he brought the bottle, something old and expensive — and setting down his glass with a satisfied sound. He smiles at Lea, who looks uncomfortable but forces a polite smile in return.

“Thank you again for the beautiful radio,” she responds, glancing at the new wooden set where it sits on the shelf in the parlour, just off the kitchen. It blares jazz, at Schramm’s unexpected request. “We’ve all been enjoying it so much.”

The radio showed up the same night Dietrich died, in a cardboard box outside their door. It was entirely overlooked in the chaos of that horrible night, but in the next few days someone remembered the mysterious parcel, and brought it inside to unwrap. Rey’s eyes had gone wide as saucers the first time they turned it on and tuned it in: their old set was years out-of-date, fuzzy and tinny on the best of days, barely managing to pick up the local signals. But this one — as a note included in the box, written in Schramm’s arrogant, slanting hand, pointed out — gets signals all the way from Berlin; this is whence their jazz comes, tonight.

Ben would appreciate the radio more if it didn’t feel like a Trojan horse: a reward, he thinks, for his joining the HJ, and the promise of much more if he commits himself fully. _Like Hux has. Hux with his bike, and Ernst. Hux and Dietrich._ Ben pushes these thoughts away.

“Well, I know how fond this family is of music,” Schramm is saying, smiling around the table at them — but still it does not reach his cold eyes. Ben pointedly avoids his gaze, pushing his boiled carrots around his plate with his fork.

Lea notices. “You’ve hardly touched your food,” she says, the slightest of reprimands in her tone.

Ben knows just how difficult this spread was to assemble on such short notice, and he knows it’s wrong of him not to enjoy it; but he finds he has no appetite with Schramm in the room, at the head of the table where his father once sat. “I’m all right,” he tells his mother shortly.

Lea looks at him a moment longer. A brief awkward silence descends, punctuated by the sound of Rey’s knife and fork scraping too loudly on her plate; and then Lea speaks again, her voice too loud and too bright.

“We’re so looking forward to our vacation,” she tells Schramm.

The moment is saved: Schramm accepts her effort at once, and gives her a gratifying smile. “Good,” he says, and then reaches for his wine-glass, raising it in a toast. “To the Reich,” he intones.

Lea hesitates for the barest of moments: Ben can see the displeasure flashing across her face. But she raises her glass as well. “To the Reich,” she says coolly, perfectly composed. They drink.

“Can I have some wine?” Rey asks all at once, having been sullenly silent until now.

Lea coughs a little with surprised laughter as she sets her glass down. “Renate!” she scolds her.

“Well, surely it wouldn’t be terrible,” Schramm interjects, indulgent, too comfortable.

Ben bristles —  _What authority does_ he _have in our home? —_ but he has no time to speak up; the damage is done.

“Let her try a little,” Schramm urges Lea. “Just this once.”

Helpless, Lea gives a tiny nod of assent, a smile fixed determinedly on her face; Schramm reaches for the bottle of Spätburgunder and pours a small amount into a spare wine-glass for Rey. “Just a little,” he repeats, and hands it to Rey. “Drink it slowly, Fräulein,” he cautions her.

Rey reaches eagerly for the glass, her eyes alight with mischievous anticipation; she takes a big swig, and then her mouth puckers, disgust spreading across her face. “Ugh!” she says, setting the glass down and sticking out her tongue.

Schramm gives a hearty chuckle and Lea claps her hands, laughing; even Ben has to smile. Schramm notices, and says, “Benjamin, won’t you join us? Please, have some wine; it’s a curative!”

Ben tears his gaze from where it has been fixed on the good linen tablecloth, edged with the lace Lea’s mother crocheted for her wedding, and turns it coldly on Schramm. “Keeping the body free of foreign elements, whatever they might be, is the central principle of our Führer’s _Weltanschauung,”_ he tells Schramm, reciting as if he were an automaton the words they have had drilled into them at their HJ meetings. He doesn’t know where they’ve come from, but he doesn’t stop. “Drink makes us weak,” he adds, insolent, when Schramm just looks at him. “Strength comes from purity.”

They stare at each other a moment, unmoving, and slowly the false smile slides from Schramm’s lips, leaving his countenance cold and hard as always. “Well, it’s gratifying to know that the _Hitlerjugend_ are still training their recruits so effectively,” he says finally, his voice clipped and measured.

Ben says nothing, returning his eyes to his plate. He can feel Schramm’s gaze on him a second longer, and then the older man turns back to the table at large and says, too jovially, “If only I was a little younger, and had not acquired all these bad habits.”

Lea smiles at this, as she is meant to, but her fingers move nervously on the stem of her wine-glass. Her unease is fighting its way to the surface at last.

“Comfort is the curse of age,” Schramm adds, lifting his wine to his lips again; and Ben, wanting to provoke him — to what, he does not know — sees a chance.

“Everyone in Germany, regardless of age, must aspire to the highest principles of _Nationalsozialismus,”_   Ben says, his voice hard. He looks down the table to Schramm again, unyielding.

“Benjamin, don’t be rude,” Lea admonishes him.

“No, no,” says Schramm, “he’s quite right.” He inclines his chin to Ben: a challenge. “Go on, son.”

Ben’s hackles rise to hear him say _son._ When he makes no response, Schramm prompts him, something dangerous in his tone: “What else about me do you have objections to?”

Ben shrugs, struggling to maintain his cool. “Polish sausage,” he says, remembering the anecdote from earlier in the meal. “French wine, Greek chocolate — I would be more satisfied with just good German fare,” he says pointedly. He hesitates a moment, casting about for ideas — he can sense his mother, tense at his side, and under the table Rey’s legs have stopped swinging. She has laid her fork and knife down and is watching this little scene, rapt and nervous.

Jazz music pipes merrily on from the radio, oblivious to the tension; Ben notices it, and springs up, seizing on it. “And the music!” he says, standing and going over to the radio where it sits on the shelf in the parlour, and twisting the dial through channels of static and news until he finds what he wants. Wagner blares suddenly into the air, horns and flutes and deep percussion, and Ben steps back.

“What kind of loyal _Nationalsozialist_ would listen to anything else?” he asks, coming back into the kitchen with his eyes fixed on Schramm.

“I won’t have you talking this way to our guest,” Lea says warningly. “Apologise, Ben.”

“Oh, no, no apologies,” Schramm cuts in. He gives a tight smile. “He has found me out. A pity; you must report me,” he declares, “for surely they would not allow me to remain at my post if they knew. How I envy the young,” he muses. “For them, everything is so clear. Things seem to be either one way, or another. It’s only with age that you begin to see life as a series of compromises.” He takes a deliberate pause. “But even in compromising, one must draw a line; and I see that I have strayed from duty far enough.” 

Ben only stares at him, impassive.

“Thank you, Benjamin,” Schramm concludes. “It is true what our Führer says: in Germany today, it is our youth who lead the way.” He picks up his glass and inclines it, almost mockingly, to Ben before he drinks.

Ben is near seething, standing motionless between the parlour and the dining-room. He would like nothing more than to go to Schramm and strangle him bare-handed, haul him from his father’s chair and beat him til he bled. _He’s like a poison, some noxious spectre dogging our heels,_ Ben thinks. _I wish he’d never found us._ He clenches his fists at his sides and restrains himself with all his strength.

Perhaps Schramm senses Ben’s repressed rage, for he checks his wristwatch obviously, and then announces, “Well, regrettably, I must go.” He drops his napkin onto his plate and stands. “It has been delightful,” he tells Lea.

She pushes back her own chair and stands in a hurry, looking relieved. “You won’t stay for coffee?” she offers perfunctorily.

“Excuse me, no, I must go,” Schramm says coldly. He goes to the door, Lea following close behind.

Ben goes back into the parlour and hears them at the front door: Lea says hurriedly, “Good night,” and then, finally, the door closes behind Schramm. Ben can only hope that it is for the last time.

As soon as he has gone, though, Lea comes into the parlour. Ben can sense her disapproval even with his back turned.

“I don’t know what’s come over you,” Lea says.

He turns around to face her, and he can see the struggle on her face, between her anger at his behaviour and her true agreement with him. “He’s done so much for you,” Lea continues, but Ben hears her reluctance. “For _us,”_ she adds. “Herr Hentz, I could understand, but Herr Schramm — he’s a good man.” She doesn’t sound convinced of this herself.

“Mama, he’s a _Nazi!”_   Ben bursts out.

Lea’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, and then open again. “I know,” she whispers. “And I hate them as much as you do, Ben, but _please —_ for your own sake, for our safety, just go along —”

The words are a hateful echo of Hux’s the other night. “Go along with them?” Ben interrupts, all his resentment, all his anger finally bursting free. “Is that what you want me to do? Just shut up and take orders and never think twice about what they’re really _doing,_ to this country, to the _people?_ Dietrich is _dead_ because of them, Mama! And Hux — I’ve lost Hux, too, to them and their war machine. My _best friend,”_ he says, his voice shaking. “They took him from me.”

“Your father, Ben —" Lea interjects.

“Did my father _go along?_ Did your brother, too, because it was the _safer thing to do?_ No!” Ben cries over her. “They _fought,_ Mama, and I know you fought with them. You fought for my sake, and for Rey’s, and for the country’s; all of you fought, and now you want me to _go along —_ ”

“Because I lost them,” Lea says, silencing him. She crosses the parlour and lays her hands on Ben's arms, staring intently at him. Through all this she has maintained her composure, though her eyes burn when she looks at him. “I lost them both, Ben. I lost my _twin brother,_ and the love of my life, and our friends, Ben, so many of our friends — the same way you’ve lost Hux and Dietrich. I’ve been through this before,” she whispers, “and that’s why I want you to do things differently; so that things will turn out differently, and I won’t lose you, too.”

Ben stops, at this. “But Mama,” he says quietly, and Lea stops him with a shake of her head.

“I know,” she says, her eyes glinting with tears. “I know. You think I’m weak. You think I’m a coward. They’re _despicable,_ I know that, Ben — I hate them, you know I do; and I should fight, you think I should fight like we did.” She shakes her head. “But things are different now.” She strokes the arm of his uniform, unbearable sadness in her eyes, and glances to the kitchen, where Rey still sits, frozen, at the table. “There’s too much at stake.”

Ben understands.

He nods, slowly, and notices that his eyes, his cheeks have grown wet. With a last look at his mother — suddenly feeling like he wants to crawl out of his skin; he needs to be alone, _now_  — he turns, and makes for his room.

Rey finds him there moments later, sitting on his bed with his hands on his knees, staring, lost, at the floor. She stands in the doorway, and Ben doesn’t register her presence until she speaks up, her voice thick and trembling with blame.

“They’re going to take you away, just like they took our papas.”

Ben looks up. Rey’s arms are crossed over her chest, her little frame tight with anger, her lower lip quivering dangerously. Her brows are drawn fiercely together and her eyes are bright with unshed tears.

After a moment: “Come here,” Ben says softly.

Warily, Rey does, slowly putting one foot in front of the other. She plops down on the bed next to him and Ben puts his arm around her, pulls her close; she resists stubbornly at first, but then leans into him. Ben looks her in the eyes and tells her solemnly, “Nobody’s going to take me away.” He swallows hard. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Rey only looks at him, her big eyes glossy, biting her lip. Even in her fear she is fierce. Ben gives the smallest laugh: “Besides,” he reminds her, chucking her lightly on the shoulder, “I’ve got you to protect me.”

“I would,” Rey says, with all the grave soberness only a ten-year-old can muster. Her young face is so sombre.

Ben looks at her, a painful affection filling his chest. He does not care if his actions put himself in danger, anymore —  _not without him —_ but he would never forgive himself if something happened to his mother or Rey. Wordlessly, he reaches for her, and she falls into his arms, pressing her face against his shoulder. Ben can hear the first muffled sob, feel the warm wetness of her tears soaking through his uniform.

“It’s all right,” he says into her hair. “I’m here. It’s all right.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my apologies to Domhnall Gleeson for putting these words in his mouth, and on his birthday, no less. As usual, I'm on Tumblr [here](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) and [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com).


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Nazi propaganda, graphic violence, and general suffering, as well an extraordinary quantity of end notes. So sorry.

*

On Monday morning at school, Hux’s cronies are jubilant.

Ben is going to their first class (early, as he has begun doing, so that by the time Hux and his HJ friends trickle in, just before the bell, Ben will already be bent over his books, and will have no reason to talk, even to look at them), when he sees them in the hall — or hears them, first.

“Well done, Brandeis,” one of them whoops, a tall thin-faced boy named Daimler. _“You_ did that, it was you!”

“Doing your part for the Reich,” crows another — Ernst Thomasson, Ben thinks, although he cannot see his face. He hears some low reply, presumably Hux’s, and the boys surrounding him burst into sycophantic laughter, as usual. Ben frowns, and carries on to class.

He drops his books on the desk next to Karo’s, and she turns around from where she and Ursula had been in intent conversation. “Ben,” Karo says immediately, making him think she’d been waiting for him. “Did you hear?”

“Hear what?” he asks, but he knows already that it’s about Hux, the boys in the hall and their glee. “What’s happened?”

“Hux’s father,” she answers, her face grim. “He was taken in for questioning last night. By the Gestapo.”

Ben blanches. “How do you know?”

“He bragged about it,” Ursula interjects. “Told Ernst Thomasson and everyone this morning. That’s what they’re so excited about, out there.” She jerks a thumb to the hall.

 _No. No, no._ On a fundamental level Ben cannot believe this is true. _Even if he did it —_ and that Ben _can_ believe; he was there, after all, when Hux reported his father —  _he would never brag about it._ “Are you sure?” he demands.

“No, that’s not right,” Karo speaks up, shooting a look at Ursula. “I heard that Ernst was there when it happened. They took Dr Hux during supper; Ernst had been invited over.”

This both comforts Ben and wounds him. _Why are you surprised?_ he reminds himself harshly.

“Well, _Ernst_ was bragging, then,” Ursula replies haughtily. “But Hux wasn’t denying it. Why would he? He’s done a great _service_ for the Reich, handing them a traitor.” The scorn in her voice is palpable.

Ben and Karo exchange a look. Karo seems about to speak, but then their Lehrerin comes in, and trooping along behind her are the rowdy HJ boys, laughing loudly and shoving one another around. They take their seats — a contingent of them at the back of the room, one great wall of khaki spattered with the blood-red of their badges — just as the bell rings; and then the class begins, and Ben tries to focus on the lesson instead of the sick, spreading feeling in his gut.

 _If you’ll sell out your own father, then who’s next?_ he had asked Hux, on the night of their big fight. For a while — days; weeks, even — it had seemed like his informing on his father had had no effect after all, and Ben’s fears had, briefly, been appeased. But now Dr Hux has been taken away, to some unknowable fate; and the knowledge settles over Ben like a shroud, a coffin-lid. It will be him next, he is sure of it; it is only a matter of time.

*

There is a rally that night. This time, Ben dares not skip it — he received a lecture, last time, in front of everyone at the next meeting. Besides, Lea insisted, sorrow in her eyes all the while: “You upset Herr Schramm. This might make things right.”

So here he is, dressed in a fresh-pressed uniform, standing among the rows and rows of HJ boys and BDM girls and even the Marine-HJ, in their blue shirts and sailor collars. Ben and all the others hold torches in their right hands, long poles topped with bowls of flames that dance and flicker in the dim light, casting their faces and the whole room (an unused warehouse, rented out for these demonstrations at a tidy profit) in an eerie, hellish light. Ben has never been more ill at ease. _I don’t belong here. Can they tell?_

 _“Deutsche Hitlerjugend!”_ yells the rally’s leader from the stage. The podium behind which he stands is an elaborately carved, gilded eagle with its wings spread: the _Reichsadler,_ perched haughty atop its golden swastika. This speaker is a special guest, some high-ranking man in the Party who came all the way from Munich to speak to them tonight. Ben doesn’t remember his name, although he heard, at school, some other boys whispering it excitedly, as if he were a film star.

“National Socialism is humanity’s greatest experience. Man’s salvation is in our hands,” the speaker shouts, gripping the air with his fists as if to prise this salvation from it, “and the Hitlerjugend are the guarantors of that future! You are the _lifeblood_ of Germany.” The rows of Nazis standing behind him are stone-faced in their dark uniforms, but their eyes shine fearsomely in the firelight. “Woe to those who do not understand. _Three times woe_ to those who oppose you! _Sieg Heil!”_ he shouts, saluting with vigour.

All around Ben, the crowd throws up their arms and shouts back —  _“Sieg Heil!” —_  and twice more when the speaker prompts them: _“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”_

Ben puts up his arm but he does not move his lips. The flames burn bright in front of the countless swastika flags. He feels dizzy. Ahead and to the right of him, Ben can see Hux, his back straight and chin set, raising his arm with perfect precision. He can hear his voice among the rest: _“Sieg Heil.”_

 _HJ by day, swing kids by night,_ Ben thinks, staring at the back of Hux’s head. _You promised. You said we’d have it both ways._ But it is night, and they are here.

As if he had sensed Ben’s thoughts, Hux glances over his shoulder, and for a second their eyes meet. Ben thinks he sees a flash of guilt cross Hux’s face — and then the Nazi onstage begins another speech, his voice ringing fiercely in the vaulted space as he cries out for traitors’ blood; and Hux turns his gaze away. _A trick of the light, that was all._ Ben hears nothing for the rest of the night.

*

“It is an honour to be chosen for this detail, Herr Solberg.”

Ben was summoned to the Bahnführer’s office after the regular meeting this week. He went there with a deep apprehension, and now stands at attention, staring into nothing, in front of the Bahnführer’s desk as the man — sandy-blond, balding, tapping his pencil on the desktop to illustrate his words — gives him his orders. “You’ll answer no questions,” the Bahnführer continues, getting up from his chair and picking up a stack of brown-paper-wrapped parcels. “Just make sure you deliver these packages to whom they are intended.”

Ben takes them: three rectangular boxes of identical size, lighter than Ben had expected, each weighing no more than a hard-backed book. He nods, glances at the Bahnführer, and raises his palm in a salute. _“Heil Hitler,”_ he says stiffly, and receives a salute in return. He is dismissed, and leaves the office, feeling no more at ease than when he came in.

In the street he checks the address on the top parcel, and heads off that way, adjusting his cap against the wind. _It’s just like I’m working for Herr Schummler again,_ he thinks, trying to ease his worries, as he wends his way through the afternoon crowds with the packages tucked under his arm. The address is near here — Ben finds the right street quickly, and turns down it, searching for the house number…but he doesn’t have to look far.

The door in question is marked with the word _Juden_ and a Star of David in bright, cruel yellow paint.

Ben pauses. His trepidation grows. But he thinks of his mother, and Rey, and Herr Schramm’s cold smile; and he swallows, and steps up to knock on the door.

No one answers for a moment: Ben thinks he could run, drop the parcels and take off. He doesn’t know this part of town very well, but he’d find his way around —  _or better, I could get lost. They couldn’t blame me for not delivering the parcels if I never found the addresses —_ but then the door opens, and a wary-looking woman pokes her head out. She wears a hand-knitted cardigan over a faded pink blouse; her hair, sitting unhappily in rigid hair-sprayed curls on her forehead, is faded too, an auburn that once must’ve been pretty. The weariness in her face reminds Ben of his own mother.

“Here,” Ben blurts without preamble, and holds out the first parcel.

The woman looks up at Ben, and then down at the package. She takes it with one bony, work-roughened hand. Ben thinks to say something to her —  _Heil Hitler,_ or _I’m sorry,_ though he doesn’t know for what — but the woman is visibly uncomfortable and Ben doesn’t want to make it worse. He nods awkwardly to her and turns away, setting off down the street. He hears her close the door behind him.

The next address is only a few streets down, but the neighbourhood is noticeably nicer. The house Ben walks up to now has double mahogany doors, windows trimmed with sheer lace curtains; he knocks on one, and the door is opened almost at once by a little girl, younger than Rey, her golden-blonde hair pinned-up in looping braids. “Hello?” she asks with childish suspicion, eyeing Ben in his uniform.

Ben forces a smile, feeling worse, feeling sick. He holds the package out. “Could you give this to your mother?” he requests of the girl, seeing Rey in her big eyes, her sharp face.

“Is it a present?” the little girl starts to ask, but she is interrupted by a bustle of noise behind her.

“Mitzi?” a woman calls, hurrying out from somewhere in the house with a baby in her arms. “Who are you talking to?” she asks, smiling bemusedly at Ben. She has a kind face; her brown hair is in disarray, but there remains a sense of steady calm about her. She hoists the baby higher in her arms — he gurgles — and asks Ben, still polite but cautious now, seeing his uniform, “What do you want?”

Ben swallows. “You are to have this,” he hears himself say, handing her the package at arm’s length.

The woman’s smile fades slowly, and she looks at him in incomprehension. “What is it?” she asks. “Is it something to do with my husband?” Ben notices, for the first time, a slight foreign tinge to her voice. “When is he coming home?” she presses.

Ben holds the parcel out and says nothing, remembering his instructions. The woman stares at him. “What have you done to him?” she asks.

“You are to take it,” Ben says, his voice wavering. At last the housewife reaches out, and seizes the package from his grasp, the rough twine rasping against his fingertips. As soon as he is rid of it Ben wishes he could take it back.

The child with Rey’s eyes has been silent all this time, one hand on her mother’s skirts; but as Ben is turning to go she lifts the other one into a Nazi salute, and says seriously in her little-girl’s voice, _“Heil Hitler.”_

Ben’s nauseous feeling intensifies. He turns away from the girl and her mother and goes, walking too quickly, making a beeline for the alleyway that will take him away from here — but he is not fast enough not to hear the anguished scream that comes from the home he has just left.

 _“Oh, my God,”_ he hears the woman sob, and then —  _“No! No!”,_ her cries rending the air. Her wails rise to a higher and higher pitch, becoming almost inhuman, the shrieks of a dying animal — and Ben needs to know what he has done.

He finds a bench down by the river. He sits for a moment with his heart stuttering, trying to calm himself; but he fails. With shaking fingers he unhooks the HJ-issued pocketknife from his belt and slices through the twine on the last package. The brown paper falls open like the pages of a storybook.

Inside is a dark wooden box, perfectly smooth. The lid is inlaid, precisely in the centre, with a black swastika inside a black-rimmed, creamy circle. The clasp at the front is brass, and glints dully in the cloudy light.

With a mounting sense of dread, Ben flicks open the fastening with his pocketknife. Slowly he lifts the lid.

What’s inside the box makes him recoil in utter horror.

The box is filled with a fine grey ash, specked with lumps and already being caught by the brisk river wind. On the inside of the lid is a piece of paper printed with a skull-and-crossbones and the word _VERRÄTER_ in tall, spindly black letters. _Traitor._ Resting in the ash is a man’s plain wedding ring, its shine dulled by the dust.

Numbly, Ben fishes the ring from the ashes — and promptly drops it, his fingers shaking uncontrollably. Bile rises in his throat: he stands abruptly, and the box falls to the ground, its nightmarish contents spilling onto the cold wet sand. Ben becomes aware that a wordless scream is tearing from his throat. _No. No. No._

He is running, the streets of Hamburg blurring around him as he races through them. He knows, suddenly, where he is, for he has been here before — without realising it he has been making for Maude Kannenberg’s apartment building. He finds it, somehow, and he throws himself up the stairs and pounds, frantic, on her door, his cap wrenched off and sweat sticking his hair to his face. “Frau Kannenberg,” he calls, his voice wretched and desperate. “It’s Ben Solberg!” He knocks again, over and over. “Frau Kannenberg, please!”

It is another moment before the old woman answers: Ben stands at the threshold breathing hard, his vision spotting, his face flushed. He feels dizzy, ill. When finally the door is opened, it reveals Maude Kannenberg, frowning up at him from behind her huge spectacles. Before Ben has a chance to speak, the old woman tells him firmly, “Benjamin, I can’t see you now.”

Ben gasps out, pleading, “Frau Kannenberg, I have to talk to you.”

At the urgency in his tone, the old woman seems to pause. “What is it?” she asks cautiously.

Ben tries and fails to form words, his mouth working helplessly. He glances around him, unable to explain what he has just seen, what he’s just done. “Please,” he manages finally, begging. He feels close to tears.

Maude looks down the hall to see they are alone, and then she nods curtly and opens the door wider. “All right. Come in.” Ben steps inside and she slams the door quickly behind him, bolting it shut.

Ben collapses into a chair in Maude’s kitchen, and she goes to the sink, fetches a glass of water, and hands it to him. He drains it desperately, still breathing hard, and nearly chokes — “Slowly,” Maude cautions him, hobbling to the chair across from Ben and easing herself into it, her gaze sharp on him all the while.

Ben coughs, and coughs again, and then when he has caught his breath he looks up at her and says bleakly, “They killed all their fathers.”

“What, Benjamin?” Maude asks him, leaning forward, peering at him in confusion through her thick-lensed glasses.

Ben fumbles for words, totally lost, shaken to his core. There _are_ no words, he thinks, to express the enormity — the _evil —_  of what he has just learned, what he has just done; but he tries. “Ashes,” he whispers, unable to look Maude in the eye. “I delivered their ashes.” His throat grows tight; his tears threaten to choke him. “And my friend — he killed himself — and my mother doesn’t…” He trails off: _Don’t bring her into this. That isn’t fair._

Maude’s face is creased in deep worry. Ben looks up at her, and on seeing the empathy in her eyes, can no longer contain himself: “I was so _scared,”_   he bursts out, “and I didn’t know what to do —” His words are cut off in a sob.

Maude reaches out to rest a hand atop Ben’s where it sits limply on the table-top. “It’s all right,” she soothes him, patting his hand with her much smaller, wiry one.

“It’s not all right!” Ben cries out, tears blurring his vision. “It’s _not_ all right! The night they came and took my father away, we were in the middle of dinner,” he tells her, the words pouring from him. “We were in the middle of _dinner,_ and they just came in — and we didn’t do anything,” he whispers. “He told us not to do anything. He was so _calm —_ he didn’t seem scared at all, and — when they brought him back four months later, I wasn’t sure it was him at all, he looked so different. He was so weak; he couldn’t even speak. He wouldn’t leave the house, or pick up the telephone.” Ben breaks off, shaking his head. “I just — I don’t know what they could’ve done to him. He was so brave.”

A fresh wave of grief overtakes him, as overwhelming as if his father had died yesterday. He misses Hans with a raw fierceness; feels deprived, once again, of a childhood, a _life_ with his father that he now will never know. _And Rey even less so._ He breaks down in sobs again, his eyes squeezing shut in anguish, his shoulders hunching as if to protect himself from physical blows. _I miss him, I miss him, I miss him._ _He would have known what to do._

Maude Kannenberg hauls herself to standing with the help of her walking-stick and comes over to Ben’s side. The tiny woman holds out her arms and Ben collapses against her, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning into her, his tears wetting the front of her house-dress. She murmurs soothing words in a tongue Ben cannot recognise, and strokes her small hand over his hair, as gentle as a mother. Ben weeps openly — for his father, for Lukas, for Maude’s husband, for Hux; for all those they have loved and lost — and his father’s friend holds him, and lets him grieve.

When his tears have subsided slightly, his breaths coming slow and rattling from deep in his chest, Maude speaks up. “I found something after you left the last time,” she tells him. Gently, she releases Ben from her arms, and he slumps back in his chair as she goes to the escritoire and opens a drawer. Ben wipes his eyes and nose as she rummages through it, trying to compose himself; and then Maude turns around, and says, “It’s a letter from your father to my husband.”

Ben looks up at her, stunned, a childish yearning blooming in his chest: _Words that my father wrote. Proof he was alive._ Maude retakes her seat, wincing slightly, and then unfolds the paper and begins to read, holding the letter close to her eyes.

“‘We must all take responsibility for what is happening in our country,’” she begins in her low, lilting voice. “‘If those of us who have a voice do not raise it in outrage at the treatment of our fellow human beings, we will have collaborated in their doom. It is not good enough to raise these voices in our homes: many Germans do this, but outside their doors, all they hear is Hitler’s voice of hate, his promises of glory.’”

She pauses, and scans down the first page before flipping to the next. “He goes on later in the letter to talk about you,” Maude tells Ben, looking up at him over the rim of her spectacles. Ben exhales, all at once greedy to hear his father speak his name, speak of him again, even by proxy.

Maude finds what she’s looking for. “‘Every day, I look at my son — my Ben — and he’s grown a little bit bigger. He’s already becoming a man. And what curiosity! Always asking questions; question after question until he fully understands the answer.’”

Ben gives a half-laugh at this, a tear streaking down his face. His father protested his avid inquiries about everything — from the planes Hans had flown during his time in the war, to how he and Lea met, to the way their building’s heating system worked in the wintertime — but he always, always gave him answers. When he came home from work Ben would follow him into his study and climb into his lap, peppering him with questions about his day at the factory, asking him how many cars did he help build today, and Hans would roll his eyes and lift Ben off his lap while he lit his cigarette and poured himself a glass of brandy, and then Ben would sit at his feet and listen eagerly as Hans told him all he wanted to know. _My papa knows everything,_ Ben remembers thinking as a child. _He’s the smartest man in the world, and the bravest, and the best._ The smell of motor-oil and tobacco smoke fills his nostrils now, and through his tears he smiles.

Maude turns the page. “‘The sight of his small face,’” she reads on, “‘strong and hopeful, awakening to the world around him, is what keeps me going.’” She looks up at Ben, and her voice, still so gentle, is serious as she speaks the next line. “‘It is when I think of him that I know what I am doing must be done.’”

Ben closes his eyes. He can hear Maude folding the letter back up, and he mourns it: he wants to hear his father’s words again, to commit them to heart as proof, _proof that he lived and that he loved us, and that we lost him for a reason._ He opens his eyes again. Maude is looking at him, her face inscrutable.

“You must go now, Benjamin,” she tells him kindly, sadly. _“I_ must go.”

Ben frowns, not understanding — and then he looks around, and notices for the first time that the apartment is in disarray, slowly being stripped-down to its bones. The knickknacks on the furniture are gone, leaving dusty spots behind; books and clothes are strewn about, and leather suitcases wait on the floor. He has disturbed her in packing to leave: to escape this country, once again. He looks up at her, confused and sorry.

The tiny old woman must sense his sadness, for she picks up his hand again and squeezes it, as if to give him the strength he lacks. “You must be strong,” she instructs him. “For your father. For all of us.”

Mutely, Ben nods, and stands. Maude accompanies him to the door and unbolts it. On the threshold, he looks down at her, and wishes he knew what to say to her — to this brave, brave woman who has endured so much, who has made a home here only for it to be ripped from her once and then again, and by the same vile creatures each time. He does not know, does not understand, how one person can have seen and lived through such atrocities, and still come out strong and fighting.

In the end he settles on “Thank you,” laying one hand on her frail shoulder, and Maude Kannenberg smiles up at him.

“We will meet again, Benjamin Solberg,” she predicts; and somehow, Ben does not doubt her. _Hope,_ he realises, as he’s walking home. _She lives on with hope._

*

That night Ben decides to go dancing, for the first time in weeks. He dresses in his finest things — his newest white dress-shirt, costing his mother a week’s wages when he outgrew the last; a silk tie borrowed from Hux and never returned. His red pocket-square blazes in bright defiance. He plucks his bowler hat and umbrella from the closet shelf where they’ve lately been relegated, and adjusts the brim over his newly-trimmed, HJ-short hair. Despite it, he looks himself again. _They haven’t changed me for good._

Rey comes home as he’s surveying himself in the mirror in their room, just returned from her BDM meeting and already tugging the neckerchief from around her throat. She stops short on the threshold of their room when she sees him dressed up to go out; and after staring for a moment in silence, she says only, “Take me with you.”

Ben looks at his little cousin. He cannot say why, but he has the feeling that tonight is the end of something: a last dance, a consummation. The Fates, perhaps, have taken his thread in hand. He tells Rey, “Stay here and wait for Tante Lea to get home.”

Rey’s eyes flash. “I don’t _want_ to stay here,” she retorts immediately. “I want to go with you.”

Ben shakes his head. _I won’t let her get hurt._ “I can’t take you with me, Rey,” he tells her. “I wish I could.” He goes to his desk, and pulls out the envelope from Maude, nearly as old as Rey herself. He shows it to her: “This is a letter from my papa,” he says seriously. “They did love us. Never think they didn’t.”

Rey seems to understand. Her face falls, but she gives a small, resigned nod. Ben puts the letter back, and makes to leave the room; but Rey stops him, and wraps her arms tight around his waist. Automatically Ben leans down to hug her close, pressing a kiss to the side of her head and smelling the clean scent of her hair. He feels a fierce rush of love for her, a need to protect her and her future — to ensure that she grows up in a better world, a safer world, where she will never need to make such sacrifices for the ones she loves.

The band at the Bismarck tonight has a guest singer, a blonde alto with soulful blue eyes and a pretty lipsticked mouth. Her set is well underway by the time Ben arrives; she sings passionately, half in English, half German: _“Bei mir bist du schön; please let me explain…”_

The dance-floor is only partly full — word must be getting around about the growing risks of coming to these clubs — but all the dancers are energetic, throwing themselves into the music and their movements. Ben watches for a moment, a tentative smile creeping across his face as the trumpets blare and the alto belts through her chorus; and then he starts to dance.

He is alone; he does not care. He starts out slow, and then grows more passionate, throwing his whole body into the dance. He blazes a path in, through, around the crowd of dancers, striking out on his own, going where the music takes him. As the band launches into the bridge, a solo trumpet wailing proudly above the rest, Ben stops, overcome, and presses both hands to his face in a moment of pure, unnameable emotion. He feels tears pricking his eyes. He dances.

Outside the club, a black truck loaded with uniformed HJs pulls to a halt. Inside, they dance on.

Ben’s face is flushed, his cheeks wet and his hair falling in his eyes. Still he dances, as if it keeps him standing, as if it would kill him to stop. Around him, pretty girls fly through the air, their young men catching them with expert grace, as if they could never fall at all. There is a reckless feeling in the air. _We are dancing, tonight, at the end of the world._

The Bismarck’s doors burst open.

At once, people begin to scream: a flood of HJs pours in, accompanied by blue-suited Gestapo men, like so many terrible insects, a dark swarm foreboding death. Ben whips around and sees dancers being torn from their partners’ arms, the great writhing mass of them suddenly dissipating. Things quickly turn violent — dancers punch HJs, who punch them back; HJs punch those who have done nothing, who stand immobilised with fright. The air is filled with shouts and curses, where once there had been music.

“They’ll send us to a work camp!” Ben hears someone cry out in terror, and this jolts him into action.

Instead of bolting for the back exit behind the stage — the secret route he took with Hux the night of the last raid, the last time they danced together — Ben pushes forth into the thick of it, his jaw set in determination. An HJ steps into his path, makes to strike him: Ben lashes out first, lightning-fast, and hits him square in the cheek. He steps over him when he falls; he sees a young woman in red tackle an HJ from behind; sees the band leader get punched by a Gestapo officer, and then grab his shoulders and throw him off. All around him is violence, is rage, is resistance.

And amid the chaos he sees Hux.

He’s fighting a dancer wearing a striped shirt, brown suspenders: Hux hits him in the face when the young man makes to grab for him, and then knees him in the stomach for good measure. Ben is abruptly sickened, even now, to see Hux so callously violent, his face cold as he whips the baton from his belt and makes to strike the dancer when he falls to the ground.

 _“Stop it!”_ shouts a female voice in fury, and a dark-haired girl flies at Hux, wresting him off the boy on the ground: her dance partner, perhaps. _“Leave him alone!”_

Hux’s eyes widen, he is taken by surprise; the girl leaps on him and forces him back, striking at his face and shoulders with her fists — and then he recovers, and throws her off him with a vicious shove. The girl cries out and falls to the floor, and Hux surveys the crowd with a predatory look in his eyes, anticipating another attack or perhaps looking to invite one.

As he looks around him, his eyes land on Ben.

Their gazes lock. Ben’s chest rises and falls shallowly. Slowly, unbelievably, Hux steps forward, makes as if to come to him. Ben dares not move — and then he is seized from behind, and cries out. He grapples with the Gestapo man who has caught hold of him, struggling fiercely and throwing him off. The man falls to the ground with a heavy _thud_ and then scuttles away.

Ben clutches at his side, feeling something bruised or out-of-place where the man had grabbed him, leaning on the bar for support. When he looks up again, he finds Hux pushing through the crowd to him. “Hux,” Ben gasps out, his ribcage radiating pain — and then Hux raises his arm, and strikes at him.

Ben cries out in shock. Hux’s arm comes down again, wielding the baton, and connects with Ben’s shoulder. Ben shouts in pain, tries in vain to the dodge the next blow, but Hux hits him twice more before Ben manages to grab his arm and then his face, pushing him back, forcing him off. They struggle, and Ben turns them so that he has Hux pinned against the bar, giving him a brief advantage — but then Hux regains control and switches their positions again, and Ben is held powerless as he raises the baton and hits him again. He turns his face away, to no avail.

And then Hux shoves the stick back into its holster, his face hostile and strange, and goes for Ben’s neck with his bare hands. His fingers — slim, elegant, _strong —_ close around his throat, and Ben is choking, gasping for air, his face flushed hot — he can hardly see for the pain, but he musters some last desperate strength and shoves at Hux with all his weight. Hux topples back into a table, hands still around Ben’s throat, and he falls to the ground with Ben atop him. Hux gasps aloud as they tumble backwards down a low flight of stairs and he is forced to release his grip, throwing out his hands to break his fall.

Ben has hardly managed to catch his breath, spots dancing in front of his eyes as he hauls himself to standing: Hux is already up, and on him again, raising his fists. Ben charges at him, and the momentum pushes them out and through the back door, which stands ajar. They fly over the hood of a red car parked outside, and fall gracelessly and painfully to the cobbled street, both crying out as they hit the ground.

Hux’s cap has been knocked off, his cheek is bleeding; his red hair is dishevelled and the look in his eyes, as he struggles to stand, is manic and frightening. He must surely be weakening, as Ben is, his chest heaving and his muscles crying out — but all the same, Ben has hardly pulled himself off the ground before Hux is punching at him again. He cries out wordlessly, losing the strength and the will to fight back: _Perhaps this was how it was always meant to end,_ he thinks dully, through the pain.

Hux pins him against the red car. Grimly, his jaw set, he encircles Ben’s throat with his hands again, as Ben fights for breath, his mouth bloody. His face is terrifying, a stranger’s. Ben closes his eyes rather than look at him, and feels the pain closing in.

But some part of his brain will not let him stop fighting: he sees Rey’s face through his haze. Numbly, blindly, Ben pulls one hand free and shoves it at Hux’s jaw, pushing him back, pushing him off. Somehow he registers that his cheeks are wet with tears — and then Hux jerks his head aside and Ben’s hand falls. He moves it now to his throat, wrenching the other one up and clawing with all his remaining strength at Hux’s hands — those hands that have touched him so gently, so passionately — wrapped round his neck. He cannot break his hold.

 _Hux, Hux, Hux,_ Ben thinks. His head is growing dim and blurry. _I love you, oh I love you, oh my love —_

He becomes distantly aware of a choking, stifled sound. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind it registers — he has heard this sound before, in the dead of night, as he laid awake next to Hux on a night he had come to them for sanctuary. There had been bruises on his face that he had stubbornly refused to acknowledge. He had eaten dinner with them in silence, dodging Lea’s concerned questions, and then he and Ben had withdrawn to his room and Ben had kissed him so carefully, touched him until he cried out softly and closed his eyes. They had settled in to sleep, after, but Ben had been unable to drift off, and laid there with in the dark and worried about Hux.

It had been perhaps a half an hour — long enough, Hux had apparently judged, for Ben to have fallen asleep — before he started crying.

Hux wept in Ben’s bed as Ben lay awake and trapped beside him, knowing that he would be angry, perhaps unforgivably so, if Ben turned over and asked him what was wrong; and so he lay there and let Hux sob until he’d cried himself to sleep. And Hux is crying again, now, with his hands around Ben’s throat.

Slowly he releases his grip. Ben chokes and gasps for breath, his head spinning, and then slumps to the ground as Hux steps back from him, too weakened to hold himself up. Hux stumbles down beside him as Ben coughs the air back into his screaming lungs. Hux is breathing hard, too, little gasping breaths, trying to keep from weeping, and Ben can feel him shaking.

He wants to plead with him —  _let’s run away, we’ll go now, they won’t think to look for us until it’s too late —_ but already behind them he hears whistles and shouts, jackboots pounding on the cobbles. At his side, Hux’s breathing is laboured; he tips his head back against the red car’s door, his eyes closed, his lovely face bloodied, a mask of pain. Ben thinks to open his mouth, to speak quickly, while they still have time —

But now in a flurry a group of HJs have descended on them; and one of them is grabbing Ben, pulling him up off the ground, and restraining him with one of his comrades. _Too late._

Ben looks down at Hux, slumped against the red car. _Too soon. Too soon. What to say to him?_ “You’re not a murderer,” he tells him. “You’re not like them.”

Hux will not look at him. His face is so pale; he looks lost, like a child. Ben loves him so much he feels it will kill him. _Let go. Let him go. He’s not yours anymore._

Hux looks up. Their eyes meet. Hope spikes, absurdly, through Ben’s veins. _Please._

Hux’s lips part. “Traitor,” he says, hardly audibly.

Ben’s heart breaks. He opens his mouth but can’t speak.

“Come on, swing kid,” huffs one of his captors, and they begin to haul him away. Ben keeps his eyes fixed on Hux’s hunched form as they drag him to the front of the café, where countless other dancers are being detained in the same way, struggling against those who have seized them. Ben’s two hustle him towards an open-backed truck, where several bloody-nosed and split-lipped swing kids already sit on makeshift benches. He remembers what the frightened dancer had said —  _a work camp —_ and registers dimly that this is where they will go, where he is being taken, now. He cannot bring himself to care; he has gone numb. Even the pain in his body has dulled.

“Wait!” A sudden shout cuts through his haze. Arduously, Ben turns his head, and is shocked to see Herr Schramm, stepping out of his black limousine. He beckons: “Bring that one here.”

Ben’s captors stand hesitant, not moving, unsure whether to take his orders; so Schramm, mouth set hard, comes to them, striding through the fray. “Such a waste,” he nearly spits when he reaches Ben, his eyes flashing. “So much passion, for nothing.” He stares at him with something approaching hatred.

Ben stares back, defiant. From the fog in his head he summons forth an answer. _“It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing,”_ Ben sing-songs mockingly, with as much force as he can muster. Schramm frowns, and in response Ben’s captors begin to drag him away again, back to the truck. _“Doo-wah, doo-wah, doo-wah, doo-wah, doo-wah,”_ Ben calls to Schramm, half-delirious with exhaustion and pain.

As he is being forced up onto the truck, he looks up, and spies Hux, standing on the street-corner. He bites his lower lip but his eyes are fierce, his gaze steady.

Ben smiles at him, tasting blood in his mouth.

He is forced down into a seat between two other captured swing kids. _Where I belong._ He closes his eyes for a moment, his head throbbing, his every bone aching. He wishes for sleep.

_“Ben!”_

A cry of his name jolts him again, makes him whip his head round. To his shock he sees Rey, pelting down the street with a look of terrified determination on her face, her eyes wide. She came to join him after all. Despite it all Ben smiles, at her bravery, her recklessness, her indomitable spirit.

He makes to call to her —  _it’s all right, Rey, I’m all right —_ but then the truck’s motor starts up, loud, and they are driving away, too quickly. He watches as Rey races, frantically, closer to the café, closer to him, shouting _“Ben! Ben!” —_ an HJ steps out from the shadows, baton raised, making uncertainly towards her — and then Hux reaches out and seizes her by the arm, pulls her close to him.

Rey gasps and struggles, but Hux is saying something to her, soothing her — “Hush, _hush,”_ Ben sees rather than hears him say — and at last she stops fighting. She leans back against him, the fight gone out of her, and he wraps a protective arm around her, sheltering her, keeping her safe. She has begun to cry, but through her tears Rey shouts, her gaze fixed on Ben as he is taken further and further away from them, _“Swing Heil!”_

 _“Swing Heil,”_ Ben calls back. He smiles softly, and lifts a hand to her.

Hux is still staring at Ben, his eyes blazing. _Hux,_ Ben thinks, knowing this will be the last time he sees him. _Oh, my love. Oh, how I’ve loved you._

Ben lowers his hand. His eyes fill with tears; and then the truck rounds a corner, and they are gone from his view.

*

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While procrastinating on Tumblr one night during the writing of this chapter, I stumbled across the song [Tonight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4gthx-gMK4) by Lykke Li, which as luck would have it is absolutely perfect for the ending. Listen and suffer. (Also, not that anyone besides me would know this, but this chapter takes place on 14 April 1939; another song that I heard while writing it, and that fits with the mood, is [Avril 14th](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBFXJw7n-fU) by Aphex Twin. Spooky.)
> 
> As I've mentioned before, I didn't start doing research for this fic until January 2017, eight months after I started writing it, when for a history class I wrote a paper on the treatment of the queer community under the Third Reich. Some of the books which have been the most helpful to me for the paper's, and the fic's, purposes are: 
> 
>   * [The Pink Triangle](https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Pink_Triangle.html?id=ZKSbQbEzif8C&redir_esc=y), by Richard Plant;
>   * [An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin](https://books.google.ca/books/about/An_Underground_Life.html?id=HOGjyWv1SGwC&redir_esc=y), by Gad Beck (I'd already written Hux and Ben's "accidental" sleepovers, and then was delighted to discover that Gad and his boyfriend did the same thing);
>   * [The Men With the Pink Triangle](https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Men_with_the_Pink_Triangle.html?id=UYh_OaQrEvcC&redir_esc=y), by Heinz Heger;
>   * [Queer Identities and Politics in Germany: A History 1880 - 1945](https://books.google.ca/books/about/Queer_Identities_and_Politics_in_Germany.html?id=bl78sgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y), by Clayton J. Whisnant.
> 

> 
> If you're interested in learning more about the Nazis' prosecution of LGBTQ+ people, any of those books are a good place to start (or hey, just come talk to me). :)
> 
> This little niche of WWII Kylux would be a lot lonelier without [Gefionne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gefionne), who I am convinced is actually just me, ten years in the future. Her WWII AU, [Flyboys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8668108/chapters/19870894) (which I now have the privilege of beta-ing, and which if you haven't already, you _must_ read, _now),_ brought us together, and I can't thank her enough for her friendship, which I cherish, and her insights on all aspects of this fic, from "should [insert German word here] be italicised?", to Hux's dad's nose, to my (ab)use of dialogue tags and colons. Danke schön, my dearest.
> 
> Thank you also to [betts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts), for loving and believing in these boys from the beginning — way back in August she asked me not to hurt them, and I, uh, didn't listen... _which_ we can blame on my platonic soulmate and eternal first reader [Redcap64](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redcap64/pseuds/Redcap64), who, among other things, told me to make the ending crueller. I _did_ listen that time.
> 
> Last but not least: go check out the moodboards for this fic ([x](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/158239405561/longstoryshortikilledhim-it-dont-mean-a-thing-by), [x](https://silivrenelya.tumblr.com/post/158525230992/it-dont-mean-a-thing-by-kitseybarbours-huxes)) made by the wonderful [Johanna](https://longstoryshortikilledhim.tumblr.com) and [Lucile](https://silivrenelya.tumblr.com), as well as the lovely art ([x](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/160855441591/pembroke-a-commission-i-did-for-huxes-from), [x](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/161251440866/gefionne-immmaghost-my-commission-for)) by [pembroke](https://pembroke.tumblr.com) and [immmaghost](https://immmaghost.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Thanks so much to all of you for reading. Alles Liebe. ❤️


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